The Game at Carousel: A Horror Movie LitRPG

We were getting spoiled by having a camera that we could control.

After a few minutes of prepping and getting ready, we ran back through everything we had just spoken about. This time On-Screen.

We were doing our best to give the reactions we felt the information deserved.

The meteor shards are all different—oh my goodness!

The bad guy used to work at the other museum, and he stole a pendant with part of the meteor on it. How scandalous!

Anna was doing her best to stay positive and keep up with us.

Truthfully, she didn’t have as much experience as we did, and I could see her start to feel a little overwhelmed as we fell into our characters and communicated so easily.

“Everything is going to be okay,” Kimberly had told her. “No matter how well you do, it doesn’t matter. We just have to get to the end.”

And that was something I needed to remember, too. We didn’t need a home run; we just needed to get on base—or maybe some other sports metaphor. As long as we finished this storyline, everything would be okay.

It was so easy to second-guess yourself. Were we overcomplicating things with our plan? I had no idea, but Sal had made it clear that we needed to include some time-travel shenanigans, or else we would "go straight to DVD" and all that implied.

I just hoped that Carousel liked our taste in shenanigans.

🔴 REC    SEP 24, 2018 13:15:26    [▮▮▮▮▯ 80%]

“Look at this,” Logan said, holding the future newspaper. We had just examined the footage of the daylight dance again and discovered that there were multiple different versions of the meteorite shard and some fedora-wearing killers holding them. “The newspaper article changed.”

He turned the newspaper around, and I got a good view of the title for the camera:

CRIME MUSEUM STAFF SLAUGHTERED, OTHERS MISSING.

“Let me see that,” Kimberly said, grabbing the paper and reading the article.

“‘Museum employees Kimberly Madison, Logan Maize, Lila White, and Riley Lawrence are among those deceased or missing,’” she read aloud.

“Wait,” she said. “Lila doesn’t know anything about this. She’s not a part of it.”

She looked up at Logan.

“I don’t think Lila has been in for work today,” he said.

After a quick glance over to Lila’s desk, Kimberly started rushing off toward the old police station part of the museum where Lila worked. I followed behind.

“Lila!” Kimberly called out.

No answer.

She continued walking, and when we got there, we saw Lila’s little corner fingerprinting station had not been set up for the day, and the doors had not been opened.

Kimberly looked around in a panic.

“I’m going to go call her,” she said.

But then I said, “Wait.”

“What?”

“Do you hear that?”

Kimberly and the others were silent as the grave.

In the distance, there was the sound of metal clanging.

I followed the sound with the camera over into the dark part of the museum where the original courthouse had been.

As I walked into the room, the clanging got louder and louder.

“What is that?” I said aloud.

I walked further until I got to the entrance to the courthouse, which had long been boarded up—except, of course, for the mail slot.

I turned the camera and zoomed in on the slot. A little metal door banged as someone tried to shove something through it but struggled because whatever it was was just slightly too big. The slot cover could not open all the way.

Eventually, they figured it out and got their package to slide through.

I cautiously walked over and zoomed down on it, and from its shape, I guessed what it was.

“It looks like another tape,” I said.

“Wait, is he here right now?” Antoine asked from behind me, and I could hear him running back down the hallway.

The windows in this room were boarded up, so there was no way to see who had delivered the package.

I grabbed the package, and just from the feel of it, I could tell that it was a videotape. Then I began to run after Antoine as he went toward the proper entrance of the building and out onto the street.

We looked around at all the people downtown until Antoine locked eyes with one of them, who was in the right place to have just been at the front of the courthouse.

Antoine ran up to him, grabbed his shoulder, turned him around, and…

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

…saw that it was a courier.

Carousel Courier Services.

CCS was emblazoned on his jacket.

“What’s your deal, man?” the guy said, clearly afraid.

“Did you just deliver a package to the old courthouse?”

“Yeah, why?” the guy said.

“Who sent it?” Antoine asked.

“I don’t know,” the guy said. “They don’t tell me that kind of stuff. Look, it was an old package scheduled for shipment years ago. I can’t just give random people details you can call the office. Just let me go.”

Antoine let go of the guy’s shoulder and threw up his hands in a pacifying gesture.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought you were someone else.”

As soon as Antoine let go of him, the courier ran off.

Antoine turned and saw Kimberly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This has just got me on edge.”

“I understand,” Kimberly said. “I’m so sorry you got dragged into this.”

“Bet you’re really wishing you didn’t stay behind to do your insurance paperwork, huh?” I asked.

Antoine rolled his eyes. “I was just doing it so I didn’t have to come in today because I was thinking about taking my boat out on the water. It’s crazy how life ends up.”

Back inside, Kimberly opened the package and revealed a tape with the words “finger prints” written on it. It was definitely about Lila, as she had worked the fingerprint booth.

Bobby re-entered the room just as I was getting the tape loaded onto the computer.

“The doors are all locked,” he said.

“The worst part about being hunted by a time-traveling serial killer,” I said, “is that it turns out the time-traveling serial killer doesn’t know that ‘fingerprints’ is one word.”

As soon as I had everything working, I pressed play.

■ STOP

▶ PLAY Jan 03, 1997 08:12:37

The video opened with Lila sitting in a chair, bound and crying.

She was facing the camera, but her eyes were off to the left. I wasn’t sure what she was looking at until she started to speak. She was reading.

“I caught your little friend. She couldn’t run from me,” she said, tears running down her cheeks. “Please just let me go, I won’t tell anyone,” she begged.

“Read the words,” a man’s voice said.

Lila continued. “I just want the tapes. I need to make sure that they don’t fall into the wrong hands, you understand. Those were for my use, not yours. No one else has to get hurt… Just leave the tapes out on the sidewalk tonight, and I’ll leave you be. But if you try to screw me over, you’ll be history.”

Lila continued to cry.

She suddenly seemed to notice him doing something off-screen.

She yelled, “He’s lying to you! He says he wants to kill all of you!”

Suddenly, a rush could be heard from behind the camera.

Lila screamed loudly.

Something hit the camera and knocked it away from the view of Lila.

All we could hear was the screaming, and I saw a bright red light glowing. But before anything else…

■ STOP

I stopped the tape.

And with that, the First Blood had passed.

I turned around to the others who had been watching the video with me.

“Ready for the next part?” I asked.

Most of them nodded or at least acknowledged what I said.

“I’ll go get Lila,” Bobby said.

And he did. Lila was waiting in the other room.

When Lila walked back in behind Bobby, her Dead status was lit up.

Dying Last Scream really was a useful trope.

Not only did she have the Dead status, but she was also on Deathwatch, which worked a lot differently for Wallflowers. The gist was that she could follow us and watch what was happening as long as she stayed out of frame.

The camera had cut away because, with the Dead status, she couldn’t be harmed by an enemy—she couldn’t be targeted directly at all. That was the primary benefit that Dead had over Written-Off or Off-Screen—assuming you were alive when you got it.

“Are you okay?” Kimberly asked. “Did he hurt you?”

Lila shook her head. “Not too bad,” she said.

“You need to tell us everything,” Logan said. “Anything that you can give us would be really helpful.”

Lila nodded.

She took a moment to collect herself and think about what had happened. We all gathered around her and waited.

“He kidnapped me off the street on my way to work this morning. I ran, but they eventually caught me. I didn’t know when he was going to show up, but he waited until I was almost here. There were three of them. They took me to a warehouse that was abandoned and tied me up. One of them filmed.”

She paused, rubbing a bruise forming on her forehead.

“I was scared, but I knew that if they started anything, I could just do the dying scream, and it would be over, so I was okay. After I screamed, they just pretended I was dead. They had this book—like the one that Anna brought—and they had their red jewels, and they just kind of disappeared.”

“I’m sorry if this isn’t helpful,” she said.

“No, that’s great,” Kimberly said.

“Did they all have different red jewels?” I asked.

Lila thought for a moment, then nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “One of them had a bracelet, another had a necklace, and then the third guy—he just carried it around in his hand, kept it wrapped in a cloth.”

“How are they as threats—what level are they?” Logan asked. “What weapons did they use?”

“They didn’t carry weapons that I saw,” she said. “They just used stuff they found on the ground. I think one of them might have had a gun, but he never showed it. He just kept gesturing like he was going to pull it out of his jacket if I didn’t tell him stuff. One was level 28, and the other two were level 35 and level 39.”

I just wished that I could have gotten a glimpse of them to see their tropes. The truth was, they didn’t sound that dangerous. So what was the angle? What made them a threat?

“Can you tell me about them as people?” Kimberly asked. “They’re all just the same guy?”

Lila thought for a moment.

“Well, they have a lot of scars. Big scars, not little scars. One of them rolled up his sleeves—it was awful. Another one had a scar on his chest like he had heart surgery or something, I don’t know. But the thing was, they were different. They were three different people.”

“What do you mean by that?” Kimberly asked. “They were all unique? Different ages?”

Lila shook her head.

“No,” she said, staring into the distance as if straining to remember. “They were around the same age. One of them smoked; the other two didn’t. He offered them a cigarette, but it wasn’t a real offer—it was like he was trying to annoy them. One of them was smart and in charge, and then the third one was not very smart. The other two just ordered him around.”

“I bet the third one wrote the label on the tape,” I said under my breath.

For the first time, Anna interjected.

“Camden thought that they were just all the same guy at different ages. Is it possible that they just have an ambiguous age?”

Lila shook her head.

“No. They all looked like they were in their late 20s. They talked about another one of them that they called ‘the old man,' and some guy called 'our brother in time' or something.”

“We gotta get this done quick or the old man’s gonna have a coronary,” she quoted.

“Maybe things changed because this is a soft reboot,” I said.

“Maybe Camden just guessed wrong,” Logan said.

Anything was possible.

“Did they say anything else?” Kimberly asked. “Anything at all might be useful.”

Lila thought for a moment.

“Like I said in the video, they’re definitely going to kill everyone who saw those tapes,” Lila said. “In fact, the way they phrased it was weird. They said they have to kill us before word gets out.”

“Before word gets out,” I said. “That’s very specific. I’m betting that was one of the original win conditions—making sure the right people found out about the time traveler.”

In Carousel, there were lots of different win conditions, but after you had played enough storylines, you started to see patterns. Sometimes, it was Defeat the Enemy or Escape. The one for this story was Survive the Night.

Just because Get the Word Out was no longer a win condition didn’t mean it wasn’t important information.

We knew they were running from someone.

Lila would be around as the story progressed. She could use her Deathwatch to follow us from sound stage to sound stage, helping in the background. Because Carousel used sound stages to simulate time travel, she could be very useful.

The first thing we wanted her to do was find Dina and make sure everything was okay with her.

So we sent her on her way as we got ready for shenanigans.