The Game at Carousel: A Horror Movie LitRPG

🔴 REC    SEP 24, 2018 00:54:29    [▮▮▮▮▮ 100%]

“We aren't trying to pressure you or harass you,” Kimberly said. “But if you're telling us not to go to the police, you need to tell us why. Start from the beginning. Convince us.”

Anna sat in one of the more comfortable office chairs, and we all huddled around her, trying not to seem threatening. She looked at the ground, summoning tears—not because of her acting chops but because she was still clearly physically spent and traumatized.

“My name is Anna Reed,” she said. “I went to Carousel High. Graduated a couple of years ago... or, I guess not anymore. I was going to a birthday party at the roller rink. It was for a friend of a friend, but you don’t ever need an excuse to go skating, right?”

“Sure,” Kimberly said.

“We had just started celebrating when the ground started to shake, and pictures started to fall off the walls.” She took a moment to breathe deeply. “I was with my friend Camden, and we were near the doors, so we—along with a few other people—ran for it as soon as we felt the tremor—”

“Wait, are you talking about the roller rink that collapsed in the sinkhole 30 years ago? Up by the airport?” Logan interjected.

“Let her talk,” Kimberly said.

Anna was quiet for a moment. “1992,” she said finally. “I thought I was going to die. I thought we all were. We managed to get out into the parking lot when everything started to fall. Everyone behind us—all our friends, all those skaters—they just disappeared.

“We were on a strip of concrete that was tilting, and it felt like it was about to fall. It was so steep I couldn’t walk up it, so I went on all fours and climbed. Camden was right next to me, holding onto me, both of us trying to get a grip, trying to stop the other one from falling… We didn’t make it. We got right to the edge, but we didn’t make it. I couldn’t climb any farther. It was too steep, and the ground I grabbed onto just fell away underneath my hands.”

In reality, Carousel probably had footage of this happening in real-time, but I wanted to give it options, considering all of that footage would have been used in the original film.

She paused as a strange look came over her face.

“That’s when I saw the man. He just walked up casually, like nothing was happening. He could’ve reached down to grab us. He could’ve tried to find a rope or something. But he didn’t. He was just holding this necklace in his hand and staring at us—staring at us like he was watching for us to fall into the pit.

“I didn’t know why he wouldn’t help us. I got angry. I got scared—for me and Camden. He knelt down so he could get a closer look at us. He was smiling, like he was out on a stroll. So I just reached out as hard as I could and grabbed onto his overcoat that hung down near the ground when he knelt. It was all I could reach. He tried to move out of the way of me, but I grabbed on, and I wouldn’t let go. And then the necklace started to glow.

“The next thing I knew, Camden and I were lying down on the ground, and it was like 2005 or something, I think. There was a building on fire next to us…. And then the man started chasing us. I don’t know why he wanted us, but he managed to kidnap Camden. I was alone for a while before Camden escaped and found me. He said the guy would find us—there was no running from him. Camden had stolen that box of tapes and the necklace and the book.

“After he caught up with us and… got Camden again... I panicked. I hid those tapes in a place where I thought no one would look for them. I remembered the abandoned courthouse. I thought I could find a way to get back to them before anyone else found them. I didn’t mean for you to look at them. But now that you have... he’s not going to stop until you’re dead.”

■ STOP

🔴 REC    SEP 24, 2018 01:12:08    [▮▮▮▮▮ 100%]

Off in another corner of the museum, Logan, Kimberly, Antoine, and I had gone to discuss everything. Bobby had stayed with Anna.

“You cannot be seriously believing this,” Logan said. “This is just confusing the issue. We still haven’t figured out if those tapes are legit—”

“Until we have an explanation, we need to act on the information we have,” Kimberly said. “Unless you can come up with a reason that we absolutely need to get the police involved now—instead of tomorrow or two days from now—then I suggest we calm down and treat this like a research project. We vet everything she says. If she’s telling the truth, we need to document everything. Let’s not forget, at the end of the day, we are historians.”

Logan was clearly frustrated. He had one arm folded across his front and his other hand covering his mouth. Finally, he turned and walked off, heading back toward the offices.

"What tapes is she talking about?" Antoine asked.

"Well damn," Logan said. "We have to go over this again."

He grabbed Antoine and led him away.

Kimberly looked at me, unsure of what was going on, but she didn’t say anything.

■ STOP

🔴 REC    SEP 24, 2018 01:23:58    [▮▮▮▮▮ 100%]

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Can you tell me a little bit about how time travel works?” I asked. “Just for the record.”

Anna thought for a moment. “You need one of these jewels. It doesn’t have to be a part of the necklace, but you do need one,” she said, pulling a necklace from her pocket with a sizable red jewel attached. “You also need some historical record. I don’t know why, but you can only travel to places that had a huge tragedy. You can travel from any place where someone was injured greatly. It doesn’t have to be a huge tragedy, but it’s easier that way.”

Wonderful. We were on our way toward a nonsensical time-travel plot. I had been hoping for Back to the Future, but it looked like we were getting something more like Donnie Darko:The Director’s Cut.

Traveling to places where there were tragedies? Injuring yourselves or others to initiate a jump? Was there going to be a logical reason for that, or was it just for the gore? If it was just about the blood splatter, I could work with it. I preferred some thread of reason, though.

“I was wondering more about the time travel logic,” I said. “Like, how does time travel deal with a paradox? For example, if you traveled back in time and killed your own grandfather, what happens? Or, if you travel back in time with a newspaper saying that we went to the police with these tapes, so we don’t go to the police with the tapes, what happens?”

“Paradox,” Anna said. “Camden said something about paradoxes. He said there were none—that that was just something in movies. Somehow, in real life, they don’t mean much.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment, but then I asked, “Camden wouldn’t happen to be Dr. Camden, Ph.D. in physics, would he?”

I needed to hand a lampshade on just how off the wall the rules were.

Anna looked confused. “No, he’s just a student at the college, like me. He is a physics major, though. He’s at the top of the program.”

“Just wondering.”

■ STOP

🔴 REC    SEP 24, 2018 02:53:17    [▮▮▮▮▮ 100%]

“What did you find?” Kimberly asked.

Logan didn’t answer at first.

“Well?” Kimberly pressed.

“I don’t have enough information to make any conclusions right now,” Logan said, clearly dumbstruck.

“I’m not asking you to conclude that time travel is possible. I just want the raw facts,” Kimberly said.

Logan, sitting at his desk, moved his fingers through his hair and then turned to grab some sheets he had printed off.

“I was going through the newspaper archives. Luckily, they’re searchable. I also went through some police files after I called up the night clerk at the station. He says that you owe him now, by the way.”

“Whatever,” Kimberly said. “What did you find?”

Logan started leafing through the pages he had printed off. “There was an Anna Reed who went missing in 1992 after the Carousel Roller Daze sinkhole. Born in 1971. This is her picture.”

He held up a page he had printed from her high school graduation portrait.

“Oh my God,” Kimberly said. “That’s her.”

“It’s more than that,” Logan said. “I found an article in the archives from 1996 about a woman claiming that a photo taken at a crowd crush incident—the one we saw on the film, no doubt—contained Anna Reed, one of her son’s friends. Her son’s name was...” He shuffled through the papers for a moment. “Gabriel Cano. Anyway, the article reads as if this woman, Dina Cano, harassed the writer until he eventually gave up and wrote the article. So that’s a second point of confirmation that Anna was not only at the sinkhole but also at the festival four years later.”

“Dina Cano,” Antoine said. “I feel like I’ve seen that name somewhere.”

“Wait, did you say Roller Daze?” I asked.

I walked back over to the wooden crate and pulled out a tape labeled roller daze.

“I haven’t seen this one yet,” I said. That wasn’t true, of course, but in character, I had not seen it.

I put the tape into the adapter, booted up my computer, and set the camera so it could capture both my reaction and the reactions of Kimberly, Logan, and Antoine standing behind me. Bobby was watching from a distance, but he wasn’t captured on film.

I started to play the tape but kept recording, because our reactions were more important than the raw footage. I could film the screen to capture anything important.

As the video started playing, Anna walked up next to us to watch. The footage began inside the roller rink, showing two parties—one for a little kid and another for some teenagers.

“That’s us,” Anna said. “I don’t remember him being there filming.”

“He’s zoomed in,” I said. “He’s at the far back of the building. You might not have seen him.”

The footage cut to some people skating in circles while music played. Then, the scene shifted to the building, filmed from a crop of trees on the other side of the parking lot, where the cameraman could stay hidden.

As Anna had reported, a rumbling began, and people started making a mad dash for the exit. Most didn’t make it, as the building collapsed almost instantaneously. Anna and Camden were seen running, trying to get to the edge of the parking lot, but the asphalt was ripping out of place and falling into the earth as they ran. They almost reached the edge, just as Anna had described.

“He’s not walking over there like you said he would,” Kimberly observed. “He’s just standing there filming.”

“Wait,” Anna said.

We did wait, watching as Anna, Camden, and two others around their age struggled to survive and avoid falling to their doom. As the dust settled, a man briskly walked from out of frame toward a spot near Anna and Camden.

“It’s him,” Kimberly said. “I thought he was the one recording.”

There were multiple, of course.

Everything played out exactly as Anna had described, though she had not seen everything.

“Look,” I pointed out. As one of the partygoers behind Anna fell into the pit, another did not. This third character stayed in contact with Camden.

Suddenly, a red glow emanated from the man’s hand as he struggled to get Anna to let go of his trenchcoat. The man, Anna, Camden, and the third character—who must have been Gabriel Cano—all flickered out of existence.

“I don’t remember him being there,” Anna said. “He wasn’t with us where we ended up. I had no idea.”

“Cano,” Antoine said. “I know where I read that.”

He left the office immediately and walked down the hall.

Logan, clearly numb from his inability to reconcile the supernatural events he was witnessing, asked, “Do you have that necklace he was holding on you right now?”

“I have one of them,” Anna said, pulling the necklace from her pocket.

“May I?” Logan asked, gesturing for her to hand it over.

She reluctantly complied. “Just one moment,” Logan said, returning to his workstation.

Antoine came back into the room carrying a thick stack of letters. “I knew I’d seen the name Dina Cano before,” he said.

He turned the letters around, and sure enough, they were addressed from Dina Cano to the museum.

We were really popping off with revelations because, right after Antoine revealed that, Logan came back over from his desk.

“Do you know what this jewel is?” he asked, holding up the jeweled necklace.

“A ruby?” Kimberly guessed.

“Red sapphire?” Bobby offered.

“A blood diamond,” I joked.

Logan shot me a glance like he might laugh but returned to what he was saying. “This is a piece of meteorite.”

I zoomed in on the necklace. At a glance, it did appear to be a ruby, but on closer inspection, it had a glassy, jewel-like exterior interlaced with metallic streaks.

“How do you know that?” Kimberly asked.

Because he had a trope for identifying things, especially expensive things.

“Because I used to work at the main museum a few blocks over, at the site of the Carousel River Valley meteor strike,” Logan said with great emphasis. “I worked with the scientists who studied it.”

As if to echo his sentiment, I got up and walked out to the main museum floor. There, I found a large display showing a map of the Carousel River Valley. Smack dab in the middle—in the place where the town had been built, where the original Carousel settlement had stood—was the impact site of that very meteor.

■ STOP