I walked through the back halls of the pizza parlor like I was walking through a haunted house.

We had put off the realization that something supernatural was going on for as long as we could, but now all of the principal characters should know that something was amiss.

My character had been there to witness Isaac’s near-kidnapping. I had constant nightmares about some subterranean hell based entirely on the aesthetic of this pizza parlor. I had seen pizzas appear from nowhere, and I had found what appeared to be a paint chip from Avery’s fingernail polish.

I was suspicious, but I could not be the one to pursue this mystery.

So I walked down the halls, looking spooked, hoping to get some footage for Carousel, and hoping that would be enough.

Carousel wasn’t going to make things easy for me. Being a side character was hard work when it seemed to test me constantly.

On one of the walls, there was a family portrait, not a recent one.

It featured Lorenzo Bonaventura, the family patriarch who founded the original restaurant. His two sons, Dante and Gustavo (now Gustavo Senior), sat beneath him on the stoop of what must have been their small family shop before Gustavo Senior took over and renovated the place, expanding the dining room and everything else in the mid-sixties.

Dante was the handsome older brother. Gus was chubby and smiling. Their mother, a meek little woman, sat between them, and they all reached out to hug or place a hand on her.

She was gone now. They all were.

The picture had a simple phrase etched into a small gold plate at the bottom of the frame. For family, always, it said.

Lorenzo and Dante had passed away as owners of the restaurant before Gustavo got it. It was with him that the story got interesting.

What was it that he did for family? What did he give up, and what did he get in return? I thought I knew, but the devil was in the details. Somewhere in his deal was a flaw that would have gotten him out of the whole bargain without a scratch. What was it?

Those weren’t my questions to ask. They were Camden and Anna’s

I moved further down the hallway until I reached the entrance to the back kitchen. It was just me in the back today. That would have been completely unrealistic in a real kitchen, but this was a movie kitchen.

I took some time to stare at Hot Head. His giant features and the goofy expression stared back at me. His eyes had not been turned on, so they didn’t move. They stood affixed at the doorway, looking at me.

I looked at him with reverence and fear. Then I swallowed those fears and got to work.

Off-Screen

Today was a big information-gathering day, and I would have to miss most of those scenes. I was getting too much screen time.

I could listen in on them, though, with my headphones. At least that way, I wouldn’t have to be as nervous about what was going on.

We wanted to know about the circumstances that led to Gustavo Senior making a deal with the demons, which we assumed must have happened. It was pretty explicitly spelled out.

The partner or their representative; it wasn’t quite clear, as she never really defined what she was. She also showed up that day.

She had the front-of-house workers rearrange all the tables and chairs in the dining area. All of them. It was a monumental task.

And then, twenty minutes before the restaurant opened…

“No, I was wrong,” She said, “Put them all right back where they were. And quick, before customers start coming in.”

She wasn’t the type to smile or gloat about her petty torments. She kept in character. But I knew that she was smiling on the inside, where the shadows and screaming spirits lay.

All I got was a glimpse at the front of house when both oven doors were open at the same time. I didn’t see the whole thing.

That was okay with me.

Isaac didn’t show up to work that day, at least not on time. Neither did Ramona.

Anna and Camden certainly did, though.

And they were hard at work on information-gathering while we still could.

I would often abandon my kitchen duties and go post up outside of whatever room they were in so that I could get a visual on what was happening. Not that I was able to help.

It turned out it wasn’t hard for Anna to get Gus Junior to talk about his uncle Dante. In fact, it wasn’t hard to get anybody to talk about Dante or at least the people who were old enough to know him. He had died twenty years prior.

“Dante never married,” Gus Junior recalled. “We always joked that he was married to the job. And he was. He was here night and day. He always dreamed of having a big, busy restaurant that could provide for the family. Of course, back then we didn’t have all the staff or the fancy equipment. It was just him, slaving in a kitchen.”

One of Gus’s sisters was there, and so was Jerrica, the front-of-house manager.

If I had been On-Screen, I would have looked like a complete weirdo standing just outside the doorway to the arcade where they were all casually hanging out while Gus emptied out the machines, pouring their coins into a five-gallon bucket.

“He wasn’t just married to the job,” Gus’s sister Anita said. “You could not keep him away from the waitresses. He didn’t need a real wife.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Anita!” Gus said, scolding her.

“It’s true,” she said in her defense. She turned to Ann. “You don’t know how lucky you are. Half the girls we hired back then would quit by the end of the day, and then the other half would fall in love with him, because he was handsome and made promises. And then they worked here for years. In fact, some never left,” she said, glancing at Jerrica.

There was a pause and an awkward moment that Anna didn’t know how to fill.

“He was pretty bad about it,” Jerrica said, glaring right back at Anita. “I was warned about him before I even started working here. He would be all friendly, asking you questions, offering to buy you stuff, to give you money. But I never took him up on it.”

Anita leaned against one of the arcade machines and filed her nails. She rolled her eyes. I could see Gus Junior waiting to scold her if she said something, which was probably why she didn’t.

“Well, he must have died pretty young then, right?” Anna asked. “He wasn’t that much older than Gus Senior.”

“He was pretty young. It was devastating,” Gus Junior said. “My dad took it the worst of all. Suddenly, he had a lot more responsibility trying to take care of the restaurant, trying to take care of the family. I don’t think he was ever the same after that.”

“I can’t even imagine,” Anna said. “But he did manage to renovate the place, right? He did really well.”

To that, Gus didn’t respond.

Anita said, “Well, we sure thought he did,” and then she left.

Jerrica put her arm around Anna and walked away with her, out a different direction than the door I was skulking around, so I lost sight of them.

Back to the kitchens for me, then.

Anna and Jerrica kept talking.

“Gus Senior loved his older brother, and he devoted himself to making Dante’s dream come true,” Jerrica said. “Sometimes his kids aren’t as appreciative of that as an outsider might expect them to be, especially after they found out that he must have taken out terrible loans or something. Anyway, don’t spread this around, okay? Anna, I can trust you, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Of course. This is all family stuff. Private.”

As soon as she was Off-Screen, she was in the back kitchen telling me everything that she had heard.

“Sad story,” I said. “So he sold his soul because he was trying to make his older brother’s dream come true? To make the restaurant successful?”

“That’s what it sounds like,” she said. “Where’s Camden?”

“He’s in the break room, reading that old book, trying to understand the common man’s law that demons abide by.”

“Common man’s law?” she asked.

“Like the general set of laws, you know? Because they try to trick you. You have to know the law to prevent yourself from being tricked. Laws on things like theft and ownership, contract rights, and inheritance. Stuff like that. You’ll have to ask him about it On-Screen sometime.”

She nodded.

I quickly held up five fingers. Then four.

Anna nodded. She understood.

On-Screen

Miss Pryce appeared in the doorway. I didn’t get much of a warning on that one.

“Anna Reed?” Pryce asked.

“That’s me,” Anna said cheerfully.

“Are you training to work in the back kitchens?” she asked. “I don’t see any other reason for you to be back here bothering our chef.”

I almost blushed when she called me a chef.

Anna paused for a moment, detecting sass, then said, “No, but I’m willing to train in any area that you see fit.”

Miss Pryce smiled. Her lips stretched too far, too thin. “That won’t be necessary, Miss Reed. I think you’re a good fit back up front, as a waitress. In fact, I think it’s time that you took a menu test.”

“A menu test?” Anna asked.

“Well, yes. You need to know what items are on the menu, what the ingredients of those items are, in case anyone asks, for allergies or other reasons, and the price. Come, follow me. This will only take a few hours.”

Anna worked to maintain a smile as she followed the demon woman out of the room.

Off-Screen

At first, I thought I was going to get a break for a while, not that I hadn’t been on break for basically the entire day, but then I got another timer showing me that I was about to go On-Screen in about seven minutes.

I idly waited to figure out what storyline or subplot might concern me, but as I looked around the restaurant, all was normal.

Camden was doing research in the break room, hidden behind the arcade machine that Miss Pryce had unplugged and moved to the back. You would only know he was there if you went in and leaned over the back table.

Anna was pulling her hair out over a menu test, and a bunch of NPCs were running around looking like they were working.

As time ticked by, I wondered.

By the time I heard the knock on the back door, I had kind of already figured out what was about to happen, just by process of elimination.

I was On-Screen the moment I opened the back door.

It was Isaac, dressed in his uniform, looking panicky.

We had not planned this out. But we didn’t always have the opportunity.

“What are you doing, man? You’re like three hours late. You’re gonna get fired,” I said. “Get in here.”

He looked up at me. “I’m not here to work.”

“Well, neither am I. But you still need to clock in,” I said.

“No. You don’t get it,” he said, grabbing onto my collar in desperation. “They were demons. The men who attacked me.”

I pulled him off. He was going full steam ahead.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We don’t know that they were demon things. They were probably just guys wearing rubber masks, and we got ourselves freaked out.”

“No,” he said. “They were demons.”

I wasn’t trying to play a true skeptic; I was trying to play it as if I were in denial.

“Why?” I said. “Why would there be demons roaming around Carousel of all places?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but they have Avery.”

I rolled my eyes in frustration.

“Oh, not this again. She left a note saying she was quitting. It’s fun to speculate, but this is getting ridiculous,” I said nervously.

We were still standing in the doorway, and the door was open. I glanced up at the doorjamb at the place with the scratches that looked suspiciously like fingernail marks.

I let fear and doubt flash over my face.

“Why are you here? If you’re looking for Avery…” I asked.

“I had a dream,” Isaac said. “She was reaching out to me. She said she needs help.”

“Isaac, I don—” I started to say.

“Come on, man. I feel like she’s here. Like she’s somewhere here. I just know it. I still see the shadows. I think they are leading me here. Okay, now, you said that you never made the sixth pizza whenever someone got a free pizza?”

“Well, I never made it. I never saw it get made. I just assumed you were making it.”

“I didn’t. You know something weird is going on. Just let me look around.”

I took a deep breath and looked over my shoulder, watching to see if Miss Pryce was going to be walking in on us.

“Okay, but be quick,” I said.

I glanced back up at the fingernail marks.

Isaac followed my gaze.

“Avery,” he said, reaching up to trace those scratches that may very well have been caused by a human hand.

“No, you’re crazy,” I said. “Those have been here the whole time… I think.”

“Look,” Isaac said, “something weird is going on here. Cassie thinks so too. That’s why she locked me in my closet.”

I hadn’t heard about that.

“There is one thing,” I said after taking a moment to react to the closet remark.

“What?” he asked, as I pulled him inside and closed the door.

“What color fingernail polish was Avery wearing?”

Isaac looked at me like it was the dumbest question in the world.

“Pink,” he said.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a plastic storage bag. I held it up to him. Its only contents: a little pink paint chip.

Isaac stared down at it, then back up at me.

“Where did you find that?”

I thought for a moment about whether or not I should tell him. Then I said, “It was over by the oven. The day after Avery quit.”

Isaac pushed past me and ran to the oven. Old Hot Head had been plugged in, and his eyes were moving from side to side. His oven mouth opened at the press of a button.

Inside were the fires of the pizza oven. The front kitchen didn’t have their oven door open, so despite the flames, it was actually kind of dark in there. There was a darkness and red fires, reminiscent of hell.

“I think this is the entrance,” Isaac said. “You have to help me. I’m going in.”

“You’re going into the oven? Are you crazy?” I asked. “You’ll burn your skin to a crisp. Your sister would kill me if I let you do that.”

“I’m not just going into the oven,” Isaac said. “I’m going to hell.”

We were moving our plans up, apparently.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep