“I’m sorry I didn’t do more to scare you away,” the Stranger said, his shame evident by the light of the moon. “I feared you would end up here. I was going to ramp up the crazy to prevent you from staying here. I was. Honest. Then I realized that if I rattled you too much you would tell the hotel staff and everything would be ruined. I barely managed to get the previous guests to leave. I thought the suite would be empty tonight.”

“Why did you need the room?” Dina asked. She could summon an intense curiosity when she wanted to. It was almost an excitement. I could tell she wasn’t just playing her character. This game involved speaking to the dead, a preoccupation of hers.

“I assume you saw the board game on the coffee table,” he said.

“Yes,” Antoine said. “And the instructions from the trash.”

“Oh,” The Stranger said. “You saw those.” He paused, his eyes staring into the distance. “So you know what I’ve done then. I initiated the ritual. The Ten Second Game as the kids call it. I know how ridiculous it sounds. I would never have believed it myself if not for… the proof.”

“You’re saying that you can talk to ghosts using a board game?” Antoine asked.

The Stranger didn’t answer at first.

The tension in the room was high. We were all afraid. So often we had to hide our fears of what was to come because our characters should have been clueless. Not this time. Not this storyline. Our characters would be very afraid because our characters were all based on us.

“Not the board game, that’s not what’s important. The bell,” he said. “That device calls to spirits. They are drawn to it because it gives them a way to interact with the living world. That’s what my daughter told me. The spirits just wanted to talk. Now I’m convinced it’s something far more sinister than that. I believe they want to join us and some are willing to do so by any means necessary.”

“This is insane,” Antoine said. “I’m calling the cops.”

“Won’t help,” The Stranger said. “The call will go out, but they won’t be able to help until the game is over. The first time I played the game, my neighbor called the police in because of the screams. Cops said no one was home. But I was. I was playing the game.

“My daughter, Sidney… she heard about the game and played it with her friends. The first time you play it, you won’t even know anything happened for sure. You’ll stare out the window and wind the bell and you will think that there is something outside, but you won’t be sure. But they are there. The more you do it in one place, the surer you’ll be.”

“How many times have you done it?” Kimberly asked, clinging to Antoine’s side.

“Five times,” he answered, “Three of them here. Last night I managed to get rid of the guests--sent them to another hotel. The nights before there were no guests here so I booked the suite and had the place to myself. But this place has been the host to the Ten Second Game many times before I got here. Last week, my daughter and her friends came here. They wanted to try to contact Jedediah Geist. This used to be his place. It's a Carousel tradition. Low square footage for a Geist residence, sure, but he was always the black sheep in that family.”

“Where’s your daughter now?” Kimberly asked.

“I don’t know exactly,” he said, “But she called me. Left me a strange voicemail. I could barely make it out, but she said the ritual was real. When she didn’t come home, I tried it myself. The hotel said she and her friends skipped out on paying the bill, but I’m not sure they ever left.”

“We need to leave,” Antoine said. “We’ll go, okay? I don’t want any part of this.”

“It’s too late.”

Antoine looked at him incredulously. He slowly left the storage room and went to the living room, pulling Kimberly behind him.

The rest of us followed, the Stranger included.

“Don’t open that door. You need to have a barrier between our world and the spirit world. They can pass right through open doors and mirrors,” the Stranger said.

Antione defied his warning and walked right toward the door, placing his hand on the doorknob.

“Don’t do this,” the Stranger said. “Please.” He threw himself at the door and begged, “Let me prove it to you first. Just let me show you.”

“How?” Dina asked with intense interest.

“By playing the game. We have no choice, really, I invited the spirits. If we do not speak to them, they will get angry. We don’t want that to happen. The spirits are half asleep, unsure of their state in existence. When we anger them, that will change. I just need to find out what happened to my daughter. The last couple of nights I think I got somewhere. I’m almost there. Please.”

“What were the rules again?” Dina asked. She seemed eager to play.

“Only two people at a time. We go into one of the rooms and stare out the window,” The Stranger said. “Figures will appear. They will answer our questions using the bell. Do not look away until they have gone. They always forget what they are doing and wander off.”

“I’ll go first,” Dina volunteered.

I went to the bottom shelf of the coffee table in the living room and grabbed the game board and bell from where I had stowed it. I walked it over to Dina. She reached out for it but I didn't let go. I stared her in the eye.

“You're hoping he’ll be there?” I asked.

Dina’s expression changed. She blinked away a tear. “I have to try,” she said.

We were talking about her son. It was clear Carousel was going to bring him in. I thought I would help spur that along. Dina’s Encouragement from Beyond trope could be very useful in this story. Giving it a little bit more narrative foundation was the right move. That trope could give us an edge.

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I let go of the board.

“Let’s go,” Dina said.

The Stranger nodded his head.

They left and went to one of the bedrooms alone.

I never went Off-Screen. Carousel wasn’t showing the audience what was happening in the room with Dina and the Stranger. It was showing me and my friends' reactions to it.

Our reaction to the ticking.

It wasn’t long before one of them gave a twist to the bell. Then it ticked down for ten seconds. We had no idea if it would ring or not.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Nothing.

I stood and watched the others' faces. Cassie was terror-stricken. Isaac was lost in his head avoiding reality. Kimberly was wrapped up in Antoine’s arms. Bobby was petrified. He had been the closest to the room they went to. He slowly stepped toward me.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Nothing.

The dread was palpable. Ten seconds. That was long enough for my blood to chill. It felt like an eternity, but it also ended too soon.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Nothing.

I noticed I had started holding my breath as I waited for the timer to tick down. The little bell was loud and it echoed throughout the dark suite. I started to see shadows dancing in the moonlight.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Briiinnnggg!

My skin squirmed at the sound. My heart felt like it was going to explode. There wasn’t any more ticking after that. Only silence and breathing. I didn't even hear what question they asked.

Dina and the Stranger walked silently out of the room.

Dina was aghast.

“Did you see anything?” Antoine asked through a lump in his throat.

Dina looked at him and nodded, unable to form words.

“We have to keep doing it until morning,” the Stranger said. “I propose we do it in shifts if you like. Otherwise, I can take care of it myself, but I am not certain the spirits will like being ignored. They may not have come here to speak to just me.”

No one volunteered.

“My grandmother always said spirits existed,” I said. “Said she could sense them. Guess what I’m saying is… I’ll go next. I have to see it for myself.”

I also knew that it was too early in the Party for anything bad to happen. If I was going to be alone in a room with a ghost, I would want it to be then.

“I’ll go with you,” Bobby said.

Apparently, I wouldn’t be alone. My new friend, Bobby the hotel employee would be with me.

“The hotel is haunted but the customer service is out of this world,” Isaac said, finally snapping out of his silence. His urge to make a joke cracked through his mask of fear.

----------------------------------------

I had no idea how actual new players should have been reacting. Perhaps this version of the story was never designed for new players. Or maybe the Stranger would use tropes to force them to play without their knowledge. I couldn’t say.

What was certain was that as Bobby and I walked into the room we had chosen to play the Ten Second Game in, I was shaking all over. So was he.

“You think this is real?” I asked Bobby.

“I hope so,” he said.

Great, now he got to look like the brave nerd. That was my job.

The room we chose still had its curtains drawn from when we had tried in vain to prevent the game from being played.

I really didn’t want to open the curtains. I was afraid something would be standing on the other side.

“We need to get the curtains,” I said, trying to talk myself into opening them. The audience was watching, after all.

I grabbed ahold of one side and opened it quickly like ripping off a Band-Aid. Then I opened the other side.

No terrifying creepy crawly stood there to greet me.

I back away from the window. The moonlight flooded into the room. I noticed that a vanity against the wall had been broken. It wasn’t obvious at first glance, but with the moonlight coming in at just the right angle, I could see that the vanity was supposed to have a large mirror screwed in the back. It had been broken off. I could tell because the light revealed a spot against the wall that had less dust than the rest. The mirror had been removed recently. I could see it had been ripped off.

“See anything?” Bobby asked.

“Nope,” I answered. I didn’t want to.

I had this nagging thought in the back of my head. There was a message Carousel had sent us not so subtly. On the page with the ritual instructions, the URL for the site had the phrase “Found a fresh villain for you. Hope you like him.”

That made me nervous. I didn’t know what fresh villain it was talking about and I was afraid to find out. If ghosts were revealed in the Party… that meant that things could only escalate from there.

Needless to say, I really didn’t want to see a ghost. Not yet.

But I didn’t get my wish.

“Is that...?” I asked.

“Oh my god,” Bobby answered.

I suddenly understood how someone could play this game and still be unsure if they saw anything at all.

Outside, I saw trees and bushes and grass.

There was also a figure in the distance. My brain picked him out but I still couldn’t really make out what I was seeing. Human brains are wired to see human shapes. This could have been a trick of the light. It could have been a strange-shaped bush. It could also have been a lost hiker for all I knew.

But I knew it wasn’t any of those things. My mind, an ancient primordial part of it, knew exactly what I was looking at.

“He’s missing an arm,” Bobby said.

“Don’t look back,” I said, reminding him.

Bobby quickly wound up the bell and said, “If you are really there, ring the bell.” He released the key and the bell started ticking.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Briiinggg!

“Oh shoot,” Bobby said. “Oh shoot. You ask something.”

“Can you wave at us?” I asked. I wound the bell.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Briiinggg!

Sure enough, the figure, which may or may not have really been there, started to wave subtly. It was even more evident that he was missing an arm once he started moving.

“Do you know what happened to the girl that was here last week?” I asked.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

There was silence. The figure in the distance disappeared.

“Okay,” Bobby said. “I’d say that’s enough for now.”

“Make sure there are no figures in the distance before we turn around,” I said.

“Right,” Bobby said.

We scanned the window and saw nothing. Just to be safe, I backed out the doorway and into the main living area. Bobby copied me.

We turned and rejoined the others.

“Did you see something?” Antoine asked.

“I think so,” I said.

I was certain, but the audience might not have been shown what we saw. Even if they were, it wasn’t exactly perfect evidence of life after death. Even if we had a picture, it would be discredited immediately by skeptics on the internet.

“It was a man,” Bobby said. “ A man missing one of his arms. I swea—”

Briiinggg!

The bell went off in Bobby’s hands. He nearly dropped it.

The Stranger sprang to action. “What did you ask last? What was the question?”

“I asked if he knew what happened to your daughter,” I said.

The Stranger grabbed the bell from Bobby and marched into the room we had come from.

Off-Screen.

He walked back into the living room frustrated.

“I guess it’s too early to get answers,” he said. He sat the bell down on the coffee table.

I had almost forgotten that he, too, was acting as a player and was perfectly capable of breaking character Off-Screen.

“I need one of you to ask me about my voicemail from my daughter. You should have done it the moment I mentioned it,” he said, angrily, “As a player, I’m not even sure what’s on that voicemail unless it gets played. I can’t play it unless you ask me about it. That’s how these things work. Plot elements can only be significant if you put them on the screen. I only have access to the script provided by my Dark Secret trope but I can’t see some of it unless you investigate. That’s the nature of the trope. Understand? Remember, we have to tell a story here together. I understand you are afraid. As it happens, I’ve never run this version before… Just remember, we have to cover our bases.”

Even with the tropes that made him hard to read, I could see something in his eye that was disheartening, hidden underneath all the layers of intrigue and mystery. Under his gruff exterior and shadowy confidence even I could see it.

He was afraid.