Chapter Three: The Final Straw II

Chapter Three: The Final Straw II

As I was trying to deal with the revelation that Arthur had just explained to us, I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Janette rushing back toward the parking lot, her husband in tow. He was trying to get her to stay, but she wasn't having it.

“Wow,” Todd said, “Normally it takes a bit longer to convince people we’re telling the truth. I see this as a win.”

“Shut up and go get them,” Arthur said.

Todd nodded and followed behind them, his jester’s grin never fading.

As we waited, Arthur and Valerie spoke to each other in hushed tones. I thought I heard them call Janette a “hysteric.” A little extreme. Heck, I had half a mind to follow behind and hitch a ride out of here.

I didn’t expect to see them come back. Janette looked determined to be rid of this whole mess. After I heard some tire screeching in the distance, I figured they had high-tailed it out, but ten minutes later they reappeared on the road. Janette looked terrified. Bobby looked puzzled. Todd was laughing up a storm.

“The exit is gone,” Bobby said in a low tone, “The road we came on... was just gone. This convention is...something else.”

He was still clinging to the theory that all of this was part of some elaborate interactive horror convention. In a small way, so was I.

As the couple slowly made their way back to the group, Arthur continued to explain the malevolent entity known as Carousel.

"You have to be careful around town," he said. "There are a thousand different ways to get killed here, and some of them are really hard to see coming."

Valerie took over. “Carousel is a terrifying place, but it operates under predictable rules. One of those rules is that when you get here, you have to complete a storyline.”

She pointed back toward the wrought iron fence where we had seen the terrified woman. “That woman is named Samantha. She is an NPC for a storyline called ‘Permanent Vacancy.’

“It’s a medium-level storyline, so we didn’t want you to interact with her, or else you might get stuck in the story. The fact remains—you do have to complete a storyline soon. Carousel is going to keep trying to push you into one. So, we picked one out for you, one that we think we can help you complete without much trouble."

The three guides waved us further down the road. As we walked, we passed by a patchwork of crops.

“This is the wrong time of year for this stuff,” Camden whispered to me and Anna as we walked. Antoine and Kimberly walked further behind us.

I looked around. He was right. Corn, wheat, pumpkins, and sunflowers. Those are not something you would see at the beginning of summer. Those were fall crops.

The crops weren’t the only thing that was wrong. The weather was too cool. Even the sun and the sky didn't look right for summer.

I was working full time trying to rationalize everything I was seeing. This wasn’t helping.

Could this be real?

I thought about what we had been told about storylines. I pulled out my tickets. My “Plot Armor” was eleven, but it would be reduced by half when I enter a storyline.

In a movie, Plot Armor is a term that is used to explain away improbable plot points. The masked killer takes out the ex-marine like he’s made of cardboard, but the high school cheerleader manages to fight him off—that’s Plot Armor.

One character dies from getting tapped in the head, another survives three explosions and four stabbings—Plot Armor.

The bad guy is unkillable by a minor character, but the protagonist manages to get the better of them with ease? Two words. Plot. Armor.

I don’t know how it functions in Carousel, but if it meant what it sounded like, and all of this was actually real, it could only mean one thing—that I was screwed.

After entering the maze and taking a few turns, I was good and truly lost. So much so that even when I turned around and tried to find the entrance I had just come through, I couldn't find it.

I tried thinking back to the picture of the maze that I had seen at the booth, trying to remember its turns and twists. It didn't look this complicated, but it was useless.

I won't lie; I was thoroughly spooked.

I stuck to the middle of the pathways as best I could and didn't take a turn unless I was certain that it was an actual path and not just a place where the corn had been planted thinly. The rule says don't cut through the corn, then I'm not gonna cut through the corn.

As I walked forward, I heard footsteps all around me, but try as I might, I couldn't see anyone else. I caught a glance of something orange and decided to go check it out. Whatever it might be, it was better than being lost in a sea of corn.

It took me 5 minutes to wind my way around until eventually, I stumbled back on the orange thing I had seen. It was a pumpkin display, a smaller version of what had been on the outside of the corn maze. Nothing more than 6 hay bales and a dozen or so pumpkins of various sizes, some of them had even been carved into faces like a Jack-o’-lantern.

The red wallpaper overtook my vision. This was the first clear image it had given me. I saw a movie poster of this exact scene, but it was different. In the painting, the pumpkins were all smashed. The poster’s title was, simply, “Territorial.”

As much as I desired to look away, I had to keep reading further. Beneath the poster was a brass plate like those that might be beneath a painting at a museum. It simply read:

Territorial: This killer will punish those who harm its domain

As strange as it is, I knew exactly what it was talking about. Sometimes in horror movies, characters that destroy a monster’s domain are killed off instantly. This usually happens in the first few scenes. Cut down a sacred tree, build on an Indian burial ground, or even smash a pumpkin, and you’re dead.

I grabbed the tickets in my pocket. I flipped to the one that said Trope Master. This was my ability; I could see the rules the monsters played by. That's what this was.

If some punk kid were to come along to this display and mess with it, the monster of this storyline would appear and punish them. I considered screaming out to my friends that they shouldn't destroy the pumpkin displays. That was my job as the Film Buff, right?

As I was considering this, I heard a twig snap behind me. I nearly jumped out of my skin as I turned and saw the woman in the brown leather jacket.

I saw a movie poster in my head. A woman walks through an alley where an axe murderer waits behind a dumpster. “Dina Cano is The Outsider.”

“Dina?” I asked. This vision was really throwing evidence into the pile that I wasn’t the target of the most elaborate prank ever.

She nodded slowly with a shade of distrust. "You run into any trouble?" she asked. That was the first time I had heard her speak.

"No," I said. "I am freaked out though. Are...are you seeing stuff in your head?"

"A red wall," she said. She was taking it better than I was.

"I'm seeing words," I said. "They're telling me that this display is linked to whatever monster is here. If someone harms it, they die."

"Film Buff," she said. She must have been able to see the movie posters in her head too.

"Do you think they drugged us?" I asked. "To make us think that we were seeing things? To scare us?”

I really wanted her to say that she knew it was fake. Maybe she could explain what was going on. I prefer my horror stories on the silver screen.

She paused for a moment and then grew a devilish smile on her face. She walked closer to me, near the pumpkin display, looked me in the eye, and said, "There's only one way to find out."

She reached out and grabbed one of the pumpkins before throwing it to the ground and shattering it.