Book Five, Chapter 45: The Farmhouse

“I’d love to sit here and sing ‘Kumbaya’ with all of you,” I said, as I put my tickets away into the ether where they disappeared, “but it’s getting dark, and we still haven’t decided what we’re going to do about her.”

I glanced over at Lila.

We had expected there might be some friction when rescuing new teams—that was built into the plan. We had thought that part through. So, when Andrew and Michael took longer than would be convenient to trust us, that did not slow us down.

But what were we supposed to do about this living human we could not trust?

From their body language, I could tell that Andrew and Michael had been protecting her for a long time. Yet, as I posed that question, I could see that even Andrew didn’t know what to do.

Dark thoughts entered our minds.

Lila had said that she was tricked, that she was just trying to save lives, that she had been told some small portion of Project Rewind—even if she didn’t know that name—and she was trying to prevent the drastic measures that cost the lives of dozens upon dozens of Players.

If we had been told ahead of time that all of Camp Dyer would be sacrificed to reset the game, would we have proceeded?

I didn’t know, and it didn’t really matter because she could just be lying. For all I knew, she was telling just enough of the truth to justify the horrific thing she had done to her friends.

And Andrew appeared to be on the same page as I was.

More than that, even if she was telling the truth, that didn’t mean she was level-headed and trustworthy. Even if she was just a dupe, she was a liability.

“We will offer you shelter and whatever food we have,” Antoine said. “We came here to save you. You can ask Cassie and Isaac—that was our plan—but Riley’s right: we can’t bring her back to our base before we know we can trust her. It’s too risky.”

Michael and Andrew looked at each other, then at Lila.

They agreed that she could not be trusted, but they couldn’t just abandon her without considering the options.

We needed to press them to make a decision.

“Are we just supposed to kill her?” Michael asked. “If you have any ideas, just tell me. I saw what she did. She could say it was an accident all she wanted, but I could see in her eyes that she was up to something. I just didn’t follow my gut.”

He spat on the ground, clearly angry with himself.

“Michael, I thought I was doing the right thing,” Lila said.

“Oh, hush,” Michael responded. “You wanted to save Camp Dyer by killing all of us? That doesn’t make any sense to me. You were on our team! You should have put us above anybody else. Heck, better yet, you should have just talked to us. We were all in it together.”

He spoke in an angry tone, but I could see there was pain in his eyes. They had lived, fought, and died together multiple times. Every team at Carousel had the same story, so her betrayal must have hurt.

Lila didn’t answer.

“You all seem to have a much better grasp on the current landscape than we do,” Andrew said, looking at my friends and me. “Do you have any suggestions about what we do with her?”

What were the options? We could abandon her, and she would get killed by some Omen or wander into a monster lair. We could try to force her into a Storyline, but then we’d risk getting caught in it ourselves.

That was too brutal. That was intolerable. Could I ever do that?

My friends and I grouped together and whispered amongst ourselves.

“We can’t show her my loft,” Kimberly said. “If she knows where it is, she could sabotage us. She could answer the door when an Omen shows up.”

Kimberly was particularly apprehensive and wasn’t hiding it well.

“We’re not going to let that happen,” Antoine said. “We’re not going to let her know where we’re living.”

“We could let her live at my place out in eastern Carousel,” Bobby suggested. “I do still have a writ for it, and she would be safe.”

That was definitely an idea.

“Except for three weeks from now, when she needs to run a Storyline and isn’t able to,” Antoine said. “I mean, we would just be putting off her death.”

“Why are we even debating?” Dina asked. “We have a clear goal, and she’s an obstacle to it. I don’t need to remind you that I’m also an invitee, and if she’s going around killing invitees, that makes me a little more than nervous.”

“We have rescue tropes,” I said. “Even if she gets killed, that’s not really her dying. It’s just her being out of the way for a while.”

“I can’t believe we’re discussing this,” Kimberly said. “This was supposed to be a happy moment.”

“The question is,” Antoine said, “do we believe that she actually thought she was helping? Because if what she said is true, she might be an ally now. But if we can’t trust her, then it doesn’t matter what she said—she has to go.”

We knew what the answer was.

We had to do something about her.

We could abandon her and wait for her poster to end up on the board near the diner.

Or we could send her to Bobby’s place, the farm where she would have peace for a time, but then we’d always wonder what she was up to. If she knew too much, it was possible she could still be a threat.

If she was lying and in league with a Narrator or something, did we want her out of our sight?

The whole Narrator thing wasn’t that likely, but still. In my head, I knew that she could just be a semi-innocent pawn who helped Project Rewind come to fruition. Heck, it was even probable, but it was not in my nature to ignore the uncomfortable possibilities.

Postering her own teammates? That was an act that could condemn her regardless of her motive. If she could be swayed to lead her team to death, even for ultimately a good reason, she was dangerous. It wasn’t like she acted on good evidence.

“We can’t stay here,” I said. “That’s the bottom line. It’s safe while the sun is up, but I have not scouted this place out for mobile Omens when it gets dark.”

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“So where do we go? Do we keep her with us?” Antoine asked.

“Yes,” I said, “but we don’t go back to the loft.”

“Then where do we go?” Kimberly asked, plucking at her hair.

“We go to Bobby’s place,” I said. “Not just her. All of us. We’ll be safe there to rest. There is food and water, even though it’s not the best, we’ll have time to think about things before we show them the loft.”

We needed to make a decision, but what we really needed was time.

The others looked almost relieved to hear of some compromise that could put off the hard decision and keep us safe, at least for a time.

Antoine turned back to Andrew and Michael.

“We know a place where we’ll be safe for the night,” Antoine said. “It’s a bit of a walk from here, so we’ll have to be quick. It should give us some time to make a decision.”

Andrew nodded his head with a glance back at Michael.

“Thank you,” he said.

“So we’re just bringing her with us?” Michael asked. “Great, wonderful idea. I just hope next time she gets us stuck in a storyline, it doesn’t have any damn bedbugs.”

No one was going to argue with him on that.

“If you want me to open up Sound Stages, I can,” Lila said meekly.

“How about you don’t say anything?” Michael said.

“There’s no need for that,” Andrew said. “Lila, thank you for the offer, but that isn’t necessary.”

Lila had a scouting trope that allowed her to open up Sound Stages from nearby storylines. Essentially, it allowed her to walk through a sort of backstage area where there were no wandering Omens.

The truth was, I really wanted to see that ability used, but not by her.

The walk was long, and we did not manage to get to Bobby’s farmhouse by nightfall, but we did manage to get there safely.

No one wanted to speak. No one wanted to think about the upcoming choice we had to make.

We knew that she could not be allowed in the loft just yet. If she had the goal of killing us, she could easily do that by triggering an Omen as soon as it knocked on the door.

Carousel was a nightmare in and of itself, but not being able to trust our fellow Players was not a part of the game that we were ready for.

At Camp Dyer, we knew that we were all in it together.

We thought that, at least. It turned out, of course, that the reason we were all together was so it would be easier to kill everyone off for Project Rewind.

But still, the atmosphere and the camaraderie made Carousel bearable.

“So you’re telling me that everyone at Camp Dyer got killed off in one storyline?” Michael asked.

“More or less,” I said. “There were a few teams out and about. They got trapped in tough storylines, but most of them were at Camp Dyer, yeah.”

He nodded as we walked along. He had a firm grip on Lila’s wrist as we walked.

“Was it the one all those girls were singing about all the time?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Now, how do you know that if you weren’t around to see it?” he asked.

“He’s a Film Buff,” Andrew answered. “I’m sure he has all kinds of tricks that we aren’t familiar with.”

“Special guy, huh?” Michael said. “What exactly does a Film Buff do in a story?”

“Run around and try not to get killed just like anybody else,” I said.

There had been other Film Buffs at Camp Dyer, but we were a rare breed for reasons I didn’t understand. If I had to guess, it was because we made things complicated.

Not every story needs to be meta.

“Roxy, Roxy, Roxy… you know, we were almost a thing,” Michael said. “It didn’t work out, but I think she liked me. ‘Course, she probably didn’t, seeing how she convinced Lila to try to kill me…”

“I didn’t want to kill you,” Lila said. “It was just Logan.”

“Same difference,” Michael said. “Loyalty is the only thing that matters in this world.”

It was dark, and eastern Carousel was a pretty spooky place to be in the dark. As we got closer to Bobby’s house, it got even spookier.

Things glowed in the forest, and will-o’-wisps played around in the fields. It was perpetually autumn in eastern Carousel; the weather was crisp, and it was a beautiful night.

We were a long line of people walking in the dark under the harvest moon. Any direction we walked, we would find ourselves in some sort of horrifying circumstance, but the road was clear, and the Omens weren’t too feisty that night.

I hated to admit this to my friends, but the longer I stayed at Carousel, the easier it was to appreciate its beautiful parts.

Heck, we saw a cow get abducted by some sort of invisible ship with a tractor beam, and it wasn’t that alarming. Spaceships were old hat for us by then.

As we passed by Bobby’s landlord up in the farmhouse to the west of the property, he was out on the front porch with a shotgun in his lap. His head was leaned back, and he snoozed.

We hadn’t been to Bobby’s place in over a month, and yet the garden was somehow still well-tended, ready for harvest.

His house wasn’t large, but there was plenty of room for all of us. Even though we had pilfered away many of the desirable knickknacks from around the house—the chairs, a rug, some dishes, that sort of thing—there was still enough there for us to make camp.

“It’s my understanding that this is not your primary shelter,” Andrew said. “I have to say, though, it is a good location. How can you be sure that we won’t have any intrusions?”

He was talking to Antoine, but Antoine just looked at Bobby, and Bobby pulled out his writ and handed it to Andrew.

“This is incredible,” Andrew said after reading it through by the light of the moon. “I’ve actually heard of these. They say that there was one for Camp Dyer, but it was missing, and they spent a year wondering if that was a clue they needed to beat the game. Of course, Arthur thought that was asinine and that we were wasting our time.”

“Arthur felt that about most things,” I said.

“He did,” Andrew said.

We stood in the living room, and again, we asked ourselves what we were supposed to do with Lila.

“Do we need to tie her up?” Michael asked. “We could lock her in a closet.”

Lila was really bummed out when he said that. She cried and whimpered something to him, but he was angry.

“We do not need to resort to that sort of talk,” Andrew said. “She was our friend, and she still may end up being our friend.”

“Then what are we doing?” Michael asked.

“Just let her go,” Isaac said. “If she wants to run away, why are we stopping her? Where’s she going to go?”

“She could kill us in our sleep,” Michael said. “Of course, she likes to let other monsters do her dirty work.”

“I won’t hurt you,” Lila said. “I know you can’t believe me, but I promise I won’t.”

I hated that moment. I hated having to think about that. Most of our hard decisions were in storylines where the dire consequences just go away if you win.

“Lila,” I said, “do you know why you were asked to get your team killed? The real reason?”

She didn’t answer for a time.

“I did it to prevent a massacre,” she said. “Roxy was right, wasn’t she?”

I wanted to see if I could disillusion her of whatever she allegedly believed, whatever Roxy had told her.

“The reason that you were asked to do what you did was likely because your team had overstayed their welcome and had taken too long to move forward with Logan’s quest. You were told to kill your team just to clear them off the board so that we could show up. If what you’re saying is true, it sounds like Roxy was actually trying to help Project Rewind come about, and your team was in the way. She didn’t ask you to save anyone; she just told you that.”

I didn’t actually know if that was true. For all I knew, Roxy really was trying to kill the Party of Promise for her own purpose, but I wanted to see Lila’s reaction.

If she truly believed that her actions were noble and designed to protect, how would she react to the possibility that she was just another cog in the very machine she was trying to destroy?

She didn’t respond for a time, and we all just waited for her. No one was moving.

“I guess that’s possible,” she said, “but I didn’t know. She seemed honest.”

I didn’t know what I was looking for in her response—maybe some acknowledgment that she was completely full of it, maybe a crooked smile to show that she knew what she was doing the whole time.

I didn’t see that.

But Andrew did see something.

“What is it, Lila? It looks like you want to say something, but you aren’t.”

“It’s not about any of that,” she said. “It’s just… she said there was another way out if I got caught.”

“Well, if Roxy said it, then we’re going to believe it,” Michael said.

“No,” Lila said. “She said… she said there was another way for us to leave the game. She wasn’t very clear about it, but she was hinting at something. I think she said there was a way out of Carousel.”

“What do you mean, you think she said?” Andrew asked.

“She wouldn’t say it directly, but she hinted at it. It was like she was afraid to say. But I think that there’s a way out.”

“And what is that?” Andrew asked.

“She said she had seen it before. Players getting to go home or something like that.”

“Did she tell you how we’re supposed to do this?” Michael asked.

“It didn’t make sense,” Lila said. “It’s like she said we could just quit the game somehow, like we could just stop playing, but she didn’t say it like that. She was real vague.”

I cursed.

“All right, I’m thinking that we should stop this kind of talk,” I said. “I don’t know about you all, but I’m not ready to trust her, and anything she says is going to be a trap.”

“I think she’s being honest,” Andrew said, “even if she doesn’t understand…”

“That’s enough,” I said. “If Roxy knew a way to leave, she would have done it. We need to change the subject.”

Andrew must have read something in my voice because he agreed, and the subject changed to questions about Project Rewind.

That was great because I couldn’t have Lila talk about quitting the game anymore. Even as I stood there in the living room, I started to hear heavy breathing.

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