The Game at Carousel: A Horror Movie LitRPG-Chapter 42Book Eight, : The Haul

We had to walk all the way back around the lake to the loading ramp, where Anna and Camden were waiting for us. That didn't even make sense, because at the end of the movie, they were climbing onto the shore across the cove from where we were.

But as it turns out, there was an explanation. The pontoon boat, which had been used as a research vessel, was tied up at the docks right next to the wooden rowboat we had floated in on.

I would not realize the significance of that until Silas, the mechanical showman, arrived. He had chosen the front deck of the pontoon as the place he would appear, so we had to climb aboard to get our tickets.

Camden was the first to push the big red button. While he did not get any tropes, he did get two stat tickets and a license for the research vessel, including the gear aboard.

It had not even occurred to me to hope for a boat upgrade, but as I walked over the vessel, I was sure glad to have it. Not only was there an abundance of seats, but there was shade, dual pontoons, and dual engines. We stole the oars from the wooden boat in case we needed to push off any rocks later on down the line.

Antoine did not get any stat tickets, but he did get a trope.

Type: Healing

Archetype: Athlete

Aspect: Health Nut

Stat Used: Grit

What’s the point of seeing a character make a getaway from a near-death experience only to die from bleeding out right afterward?

If the user manages to escape captivity or an ongoing attack, they will heal life-threatening, unseen injuries.

A clean getaway deserves a clean bill of health. Or near enough.

That was probably a direct result of his escaping the initial trap pod but being so injured in the process that he likely would have died even if he had not gotten caught in the second one. It would build off his Mountain as a Metaphor trope very well if he chose to use it.

Anna got two stat tickets and one trope.

Type: Insight/Action

Archetype: Final Girl

Aspect: --

Stat Used: Moxie

The job of the main character is to walk the audience through the story, but sometimes that movie has important elements that take place in the past or even in the protagonist’s imagination. The audience will have to follow them there, too.

The user can daydream about some part of their backstory or current torment On-Screen to trigger a scene involving the memory or horror, either for a full flashback or a simple imagined fake-out.

The camera follows you wherever you go. There is no escape.

This was a Final Girl staple. Being able to visually see the antagonist tormenting the protagonist through daydreams or other types of fake-outs or memories was an essential horror movie trope.

Cassie did not get stat tickets despite being underleveled. She had technically been part of the Second Blood killings, but she shared that with me, and since the story appeared to allow for no psychic powers at all, her tropes were less than useful.

It just so happened she got another trope to help fix that.

Type: Rule

Archetype: Psychic

Aspect: --

Stat Used: Moxie

Even a movie without confirmed supernatural forces can be ruled by forces of destiny, even if no one knows it.

When this trope is equipped, most supernatural tropes will still have some effect that does not confirm the presence of the supernatural to the characters. Predictions become instincts, curses become metaphors, and mental powers are replaced by the human spirit.

The audience might see the forces of destiny at play. The characters will be none the wiser.

This seemed complicated and would involve a lot of trial and error. Never being able to confirm her psychic powers would certainly be a handicap, but it would allow her to actually use the powers, if only for the knowledge they might give her.

I got nothing but the normal money we usually received. I was very over-leveled, and despite my character dying and me taking massive damage, it was not a particularly challenging storyline for me. Camden did all the heavy work when it came to planning.

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Just as we had hoped, we had the opportunity to rest at the setting for the storyline. I had hardly ventured up into the campgrounds and marina area where the story took place, and for good reason. Any scene that showed all of the docks and boats would undercut that this was an abandoned lake just reopening.

There was even a restaurant at the marina, but we had to pay for it. Luckily, there were no Omens around that I could find. The area should be safe, at least for a while.

Even as we toured around the campgrounds and looked at the cabins they had for rent, in my heart, I knew we would still end up sleeping on the pontoon. It was not comfortable, and it was not enclosed by itself; we had to put up a tent we had gotten at Eternal Savers Club, but the fear that we would have to make a dash back for the water in the middle of the night after getting ambushed was too real.

While helping maneuver the large tent onto the back deck of the pontoon, between the benches, I happened to look up at the gizmos and gadgets that were attached to the boat because of Camden’s character, a wildlife scientist.

There was a big screen with lots of green circles and dots that, to my eyes, looked like a radar.

“Wait a second,” I said. “If we had taken your boat instead of the bass boat, would we have been able to see those big things under the water before the finale?”

“Probably,” Camden said, “but that is not the sonar. That is this over here,” he said, pointing to a much smaller screen. It was a fish finder.

“Then what is this thing?” I asked.

“I believe that is the radio tracking equipment for when we would tag big fish. We could see where they were in the lake. Of course, they kept getting eaten, and the trackers would disappear, but that was the idea at least.”

It was wise of Camden not to reveal that information early in the storyline. At the end of the day, we needed a reason our characters could get out on that lake without looking like idiots, and if he had revealed that all the large fish they were tracking had disappeared and the trackers were destroyed, it would have been hard to justify entering the lake after the fishermen disappeared.

I went up to the marina restaurant to get some to-go food for the others and to stock up on other necessities at the convenience store, but I was not really the one doing the shopping or the thinking. I was just there looking for Omens. By that point in time, it was second nature. I could do it while lost in thought.

And I really was lost in thought. I was lost in guilt, I was lost in regret, and I was hoping beyond hope that no one was going to point out how all of this was somehow my fault, how I should have been the one to predict it.

Of course, we were always going to be put in a position where we had to do the right thing by choosing to spare Cassie, and of course, we were going to be punished for it. For all I knew, this was the best outcome of the choices we could have made, but at least if I had not suggested we hit the river to try to save Cassie, whatever bad thing happened would not be my fault.

The convenience store had those little popsicles that were so deformed you would never be able to guess what they were meant to be originally. Mine looked like a single-celled organism blown up about a thousand times its size.

It was not until we were eating dinner, which was just fried catfish, macaroni and cheese, and dry rolls, that I worked up the courage to bring up what I had seen using my Coming to a Theater Near You trope.

I told them everything I could see, basically giving a play-by-play while replaying it in my head.

“So they are going to die?” Antoine asked.

It was a fair guess. A good portion of the time that I checked up on people using that trope, the trailers would spell doom and gloom for whoever was involved.

“I don’t know,” I said. “They have a pretty good team, and Bobby brought in Jules.”’

I was going to say more, but I felt silly. Did they really have a good team? They had a Final Girl and a Comedian as their main characters, and then a Hysteric and a Wallflower. Who would be their planner?

“Well, whatever type of team they have, I think they can do it. I didn’t get the sense that the storyline was doomed from the trailer, but it is possible that the information I got from my trope was outdated. I didn’t see any scenes from later in the film, so it’s possible they just hadn’t gotten that far yet.”

“What are we hoping for?” Camden asked. “Whether they live or die, they’re still stuck in unchartedCarousel. How are we supposed to get to them?”

“They’re alive,” Anna said. “I can feel them. I can see that they’re scared, and Bobby is frustrated. I think they’re still in the storyline. Maybe they will be for a while. You said it was about trying to stay in a house for as long as possible. That could be a really long storyline. Maybe things will be okay.”

Maybe they would be. She had a point. A storyline about waiting out the competition in some sort of trap house could last a while.

But then what? Something worse comes along to kill them?

I felt so conflicted, because in a strange way I almost wished that they had died in some storyline where we could save them. Knowing that they were out there alive meant that any terrible fate in the Many Worlds could befall them. Death was finite; its risks were known. But life had so many possibilities, so many terrible turns.

What a terrible person I was, wishing that my friends were dead just so I didn't have to keep worrying about them and could focus on other problems.

There was no way I could save them, no way we could even find them. The rivers of Carousel ran everywhere, and we had no way of navigating them, even with Camden having memorized much of the map that made no sense.

We had no way of understanding where they were.

I decided to leave the pontoon and take a walk. It was a nice enough place with the storyline over. No one was freaking out about missing fishermen.

It was a world of eternal summer, of children playing in the water even though it was late at night, but I wasn't going to fault Carousel for that. This area wasn't finished. It had rough edges. For instance, there was no entrance or exit to the park. People would drive away and simply come back a few minutes later to start their day over. Surely that, too, was an oversight.

Some kids were playing catch with one of those sponge balls that were supposed to be safe and soft, but the truth was, if they had enough water in them, they could slap the side of your face as hard as any hand.

I was angry at Carousel and at myself, and somehow the anger at myself took center stage. Our time in Carousel was filled with hectic moments, impossible choices, and long stretches of boredom where nothing even happened worth reporting on or remembering, and yet the boredom never felt like peace, because we were always wondering what was going to happen next to ruin everything.

Our plan to spend the apocalypse in a safe castle was just never going to work. Carousel needed footage, and the bigger our defense, the bigger its siege. But it wasn't trying to simply slay us; it was like it was trying to challenge us, to prod us, to force us into some bigger narrative that would be more entertaining.

I watched as the children played with that fabric-covered sponge, as if they were having the best time in the world.

One of them threw their ball, and it passed right by their target and landed upon a large rock next to the shore, but it didn't stay there. The rock was tilted, so it rolled back down into the water and was easily retrieved by one of the kids.

And suddenly it struck me that maybe all Carousel wanted from us was to be proactive. I could do that.

I reached into my hoodie pocket and pulled out one of the trope items we had received after beating Red Wood. It was a cue ball with the trope Boomerang Physics attached, a comedic trope that allowed it to land exactly where you wanted it to through some convoluted Rube Goldbergmachine shenanigans. It could even be instructed to find its way back to the sender.

I looked out at the children playing in the lake, and suddenly I knew what we needed to do.