The Game at Carousel: A Horror Movie LitRPG

🔴 REC    SEP 24, 2018 18:01:02    [▮▮▮▮▮ 100%]

"Man, this place is a dump," Bobby said as we walked through the neglected historical building that would one day be the museum we worked at. "But there are no vagrants here. I checked the whole place."

We could barely see as we walked around. The windows were all still shuttered in 2010.

"I don't know. Looks pretty much the same to me," Logan said. "If anything, the wind doesn't whistle through the walls quite as loud."

The building wasn't exactly a wreck, but it was dusty, and there was all kinds of detritus on the floor—all evidence of what these rooms had been used for in the past. From the tiny courthouse to the police station, from back when Carousel wore short pants, the place held a lot of history.

"Are we safe here?" Anna asked. "Is there someone that might show up?"

"I don't think so, sweetie," Kimberly said. "This is pretty much how it looked when we started renovations, so as far as I know, not many people come through here between now and then."

We made our way through the building, looking for a room that was at least habitable. The office was a mess. We settled on staying in the courthouse side of the building because it was the best sealed off and had less stuff on the floor.

As we entered, we all gravitated toward that same alcove where we had fatefully found those videotapes. I filmed the bricks that were still stacked neatly and tightly.

"What would that even do to the timeline?" Antoine asked. "That's the worst part about this. I feel like we can't make a plan because I have no idea how this is supposed to work."

"Lot of possibilities," I said. "My money says that since we took the magic carpet ride, we're pretty much stuck this way. Even if we were to take those tapes and burn them in 2010 before we ever found them, we would still be stuck out of time. We would still be here. We would just be on a different version of the timeline."

Even if I had ideas, I didn't want to share them.

Typically, you learned the rules of time travel very early in a time travel movie, but we were pushing on toward the midpoint, and not only had we not learned the rules, but we had been given no opportunity to.

There was no convenient time travel manual. None of us were physicists. Even when we perused the Internet for theories on time travel, we didn't find anything. We probably needed a special trope for that. Being able to use a search engine would be cheating.

I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that we were in a version of time travel where the rules were less important. Perhaps, as the glowing amulets suggested, we were in a magical version—or worse, a cosmic horror version.

I waited on bated breath to find out what Camden would have to say. Heck, I waited on bated breath to find out if Camden would end up being an NPC or not.

Anna swore he wouldn't.

"So we need to get some rest," Bobby said. He was talking about him and his dogs because they were going to take the night shift. "Try not to make too much noise. Shasta is just way too curious for her own good."

We nodded, and I stopped recording.

■ STOP

▶ PLAY SEP 24, 2018 16:53:42

I sat down with the camera to rewatch footage from the drag race disaster.

The footage of the trip through time had appeared as nothing but static—but not the type of static created by the device. It was a visual kaleidoscope too complex for the camera's lens to focus on, too compressed for its memory to record, and too hectic to make any sense of.

Luckily, as soon as we arrived on the street with the drag race, the camera started working again. And as I watched the footage, I started to see the very thing I was afraid of.

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There was a man in a fedora and a trench coat holding an old video camera—one much bigger than mine.

He was hardly fifty feet away from us, and we hadn't seen him when we were originally there. In fact, I suspected that he wasn’t there when we showed up. It was only later, through time travel efforts of his own, that he arrived—and our recording changed to accommodate that.

But as I watched the film, the man never paid us much mind. He never focused the camera on us or even stared at us.

Was it possible that he had not chased us to this point in time, but rather came here of his own accord because history said that there was a mass death event?

Was it that simple?

There was an easy way to find out—because we had brought with us all of the tapes that Camden had stolen from them and that Anna had hidden in the wall.

I could simply check.

■ STOP

So I did.

Sure enough, there were changes. An extra tape could be found inside the bag we had put all the tapes in, and this one said racing lane. Of course, that title also appeared on the manifest Logan had written of all the tape titles, but that didn't mean anything—because the manifest itself would change as the past did.

Clearly, this universe used the trope where human memory doesn’t change when the past changed even though other markers of the past do.

That was awfully convenient.

In fact, when I checked the book ofCarousel’sbiggest tragedies, I saw that there was now a listing for the drag race accident.

I sat back, put my head against the wall, and breathed deeply.

Time travel movies were never fully logical. Even the ones that paid attention to the details often allowed themselves some leeway for narrative purposes. I felt so in the middle of everything that I couldn’t sort out which of these phenomena had to do with the time travel mechanism itself and which were simple narrative conveniences.

Luckily, one privilege that time travel movies had was that we didn’t have to explain everything. That wasn’t really our job. The audience could piece things together, but we would surely get a higher score if things were straightforward.

This was one film where the audience might understand better than the players.

I tried to focus on what revelation Camden could reveal that would straighten everything out.

I came up with a few answers. It was time to plan for each one.

Time travel demon who enjoys torture? That would explain some things.

Metaphorical time travel where the mechanics were not concrete? I would breathe a sigh of relief.

I could keep guessing forever, but it was useless. Just because I saw something didn’t mean the audience would. When Carousel edited everything together, this story might end up simpler than Back to the Future.

I needed to focus on something else so I reached into my hoodie pocket and brought out my headphones to use Quiet on Set.

Time to listen to what was going on On-Screen.

And as soon as I put them on—well, I heard Dina’s voice.

"Gabriel? Gabriel, can you hear me?" she asked.

There was no answer. I listened for ten, fifteen seconds, and all I could hear was her breathing. Then I heard a click—something I thought I recognized—followed by another click, then a whir. And then another click.

Finally, I remembered where I’d heard those sounds before.

She was operating a handheld tape player similar to my Walkman.

She clicked again, and this time I heard:

"Gabriel, can you hear me?" but it was a recording.

Then—static. A slow, creeping hiss, not too dissimilar from the sound of wind whistling through the walls of the building I was sitting in.

Bursts of sound. Chirps. Hums. Maybe even a voice, but I couldn’t tell.

"Oh, thank goodness," Dina said. "After last time, I thought something terrible had happened."

There was another click, a long pause, followed by stop, then rewind, and then play.

This time, the static was more violent—louder. And yet, buried within it was a soothing sound. Static crackles that together sounded like waves on a beach.

No—that wasn’t quite right. They were more violent than that.

"I don’t know what to do to help you," Dina said. "I sent letters to the museum like you asked, but nobody ever showed up. No one believes me."

The process repeated again—she recorded her answer, then replayed it.

"I know. I believe you. I have always believed you. Can you tell me more about what you were saying before? Can you tell me about the shores of time?"

The shores of time, I thought to myself. That sounded important.

Time as a metaphor? Time as a physical thing?

I needed to talk to Antoine and the others. While I had been busy with the tapes, they had been responsible for reading Dina’s letters. We had some time now—time where I could try to understand what it was her subplot was contributing to the overall story.

There was a long pause this time. Then Dina played whatever it was she had recorded.

And all I heard was static.

I tried to hear in between the chirps and the beeps, but there was nothing. Just an endless rush, like water over a waterfall.

Dina didn’t elaborate.

And then, suddenly—I didn’t hear anything at all.

She wasn’t On-Screen anymore.

I immediately went to speak to the others and show them that the Generation Killer had already found the drag race incident—and filmed it.

"I don't remember seeing him," Kimberly said as she stared down at the little screen on the camera. "I didn't see the other one either."

"The other one?" I asked.

She pointed—and sure enough, there was another one of them on the other side of the street. I only got a glimpse of him in the footage.

"He figured out we were here," Anna said. "I told you. No matter what we did, he would find us."

"It was that stockbroker or whatever he was," Logan said. "I'll bet money on it. He probably went straight to the police, screaming about being teleported into the past and asking to speak to Marsha."

"Okay, but there's only one of them," Antoine said. "If they knew something, wouldn’t they send, like, ten?"

We didn’t have answers.

But we had a plan to stick to. That would have to be enough.

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