Arc II, Chapter 9: Carousel Loves Families!

Arc II, Chapter 9: Carousel Loves Families!

“I am asking you literally. Where did you enter Carousel from?” the man said.

I was hesitant to answer.

Antoine wasn’t.

“Olde Hill Road,” he said. “By the run-down bed and breakfast.”

The man ran his hand over the top of his hair. “That’s interesting. Okay. I have to tell you something. You’re not going to want to believe me. Heck, you probably won’t believe me at all, not until it starts happening.”

“Until what starts happening?” Kimberly asked.

The man contemplated his answer. “Sit down. This will sound weird.”

We all did as he asked. The other NPCs in the Diner had long gone back to what they were doing before the man entered the building.

“I am bound by forces that frustrate my attempts to help you, but I am trying to help you. We all have our puppet strings, even me, even you. Listen beyond what I say. There are things out there that can’t be true. At the Centennial, things that don't line up. It’s all part of the trick. You were not invited here for the reasons you think you were. Tell me, why did you come here?”

It seemed that Carousel was getting right into it.

“Horror convention,” Bobby said with sadness in his eyes.

“My brother invited me to his lake house,” Antoine answered. “He invited my friends too.”

Cassie took a deep breath. She stared at the man the way someone might stare at a ghost. “Our brother too. He’s a doctor at the hospital.”

“I see. I’m sorry to tell you this,” the man said. “But you were tricked. You’re loved ones aren’t here. If they’re likely dead. There is no horror convention.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Antoine said. He looked shocked at the words coming out of his own mouth. It was all a knee-jerk reaction. It didn’t make sense. Antoine knew what the man said was true. It made no sense for him to react that way.

Yet, I knew why Antoine had said it. Every word that was coming out of this man's mouth was hostile to my mind. Everything he said I didn't want to believe even though I knew it to be true. There was something going on.

“This is not Carousel. It certainly isn’t this happy place,” the man said pointing his hand back in the direction of the celebration. “This is part of the trap.”

“A trap?” I asked, hoping to get some clarification. Still, my mind revolted against the information he was giving us. I didn’t want to believe it for some reason. “Why would anyone want to trap us?”

At this point a new player would be extremely skeptical and likely would not have seen anything supernatural. I tried to speak as if I thought the whole conversation was a joke or the ravings of a lunatic.

“I don’t know,” the man said. “But whoever set the trap did so because they want you here. I don’t know for what purpose.”

“Can you be a little more cryptic, please?” Isaac asked. His instinct to make a quip was stronger than his unease.

The man rolled his eyes.

“So, what are they going to do now that they have us?” I asked with a forced smirk.

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” the man said.

“Try us,” I said. We needed to slow down and get as much information as possible. I had to fight the temptation to jump forward in the conversation to larger questions.

He shook his head. “I think they want you because your story hasn’t been told yet, unlike the rest of us. The only people in this whole town who haven’t gotten to The End yet are the seven of you. They want to know how far you can go.”

“Who’s they?” Antoine asked.

The man smiled. “After it starts happening, I’ll try to find you. Then we can talk. When you’re ready to believe me.”

He started to get up.

“You’re a Stranger,” Dina said quickly.

The man looked at her and nodded his head. “I know. You don’t know me. I don’t know you, but you have to believe me.”

Carousel’s Centennial Capsule—A Hundred Years of Fun!

Buried August 5, 2022.

Do not open for One Hundred Years!

Carousel Loves Families!

That "Carousel Loves Families" slogan was on signs and booths, flyers and carnival food wrappers. Now, it was on a time capsule.

“I see you are admiring our new tradition!” Mayor Gray said enthusiastically as we walked up. “Well, she goes into the ground soon, never to be seen again for a hundred years. Isn’t that exciting?”

I nodded.

“Why, I plan to drop in this letter,” he said, brandishing a fancy envelope. “It contains my advice to the mayor of a hundred years from now, as well as my hopes for the future of Carousel. I believe in this place. I believe in what it can be. Do you?”

He was looking at Dina.

“Well, I just got here,” she said.

He smiled knowingly. “I assure you by the time you leave, you will be a believer in my vision for this place. It will be a place of prosperity, of happiness, of reconciliation between what has been and what can be. Do you know who said that?”

He was looking at me this time.

“Bartholomew Geist?” I guessed.

“Yes and no,” he said, looking back at the statue behind him. “It was actually another of our founding fathers, Silas Dyrkon. Geist repeated the words loudly and often, though.”

The mayor looked like he was about to say more, but before he could, the men digging near the statue started calling for him.

I looked over. One of the men rammed his shovel down into the large hole they had been digging. A clanging sound echoed over the square.

“Pipes?” the mayor asked calmly. “I was assured that this would be a safe place to dig for the capsule.”

The men continued finessing the dirt with their shovels as the mayor looked down into the hole quizzically. He looked absolutely at a loss for words.

“This is...” he said. “This makes no sense. It can’t be. Who do we call about this? Who would know?”

Before we could investigate further, we were approached by the woman from the visitor’s booth. She handed Kimberly a handwritten note and map.

“Now just follow these directions,” Gina said. “We’ve got you set up with three rooms all in one wing of the hotel. It’s a nice one if you ask me. Newly renovated. Room service, the whole nine yards. Normally we wouldn’t do this, but given your dire situation, we thought, why not just go the extra mile? I mean, it is a time of celebr—”

She stopped talking and stared over in the direction of the hole. I followed her gaze. Most everyone else was already looking in that direction.

The men were working together to lift something large and metallic out of the ground. It was a cylinder covered in dirt. There were handles and a latch on the side. It look similar to the time capsule that had been prepared for the centennial, but it was slightly larger, and slightly different in its shape.

“I never heard anything about this!” the mayor yelled. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and started wiping dirt off the side of the object. As he did, the bewilderment on his face grew, I knew this because he would look back at the crowd that had gathered just to make sure they were seeing the same thing he was.

As he wiped the dirt away, words were revealed words:

Carousel’s Time Capsule!

A Hundred Years of Thrills--Here’s to a Hundred More!

DO NOT OPEN UNTIL August 5, 2092.

Buried August 5, 1992, during Carousel’s Centennial Celebration

The Mayor, completely speechless, continued to wipe so as to uncover the final words:

Carousel Loves Families!