If I wasn’t standing four feet away from him, I would have been really jazzed to see the ghost of J.T. Guzman. This was my favorite type of ghost to see in horror movies. He didn’t look faded or transparent. In fact, he looked solid, though I wasn’t going to test if he was.

He had died of a broken neck and his spirit forever reflected that. Every time a ghost like that popped up in cinema I would smile and hope to guess the cause of death of each ghost. My favorite movie with spirits of this kind was Thirteen Ghosts, but there were plenty of good ones.

Seeing him in person wasn’t as fun. His spine stuck so far out of place I could practically see it through his skin, his fingers were broken and his nails busted. It looked like he had been dragged and had grabbed onto the ground for dear life, but that was all of what I could see by the moonlight.

“We need to get this closed up,” The Stranger said, grabbing the cardboard from Bobby’s frozen hands and walking to the window.

“I found tape,” Bobby said, unable to take his eyes off the ghost. He held out a roll of duct tape.

I grabbed it and helped patch up the broken window.

“Cardboard will keep ghosts out?” Dina asked.

“Funny how that works, isn’t it?” The Stranger said. “Couldn’t say why.”

“When you’re out there, everything is so far away…” J.T. said. “When I saw the broken window… it was like suddenly the house was closer. Suddenly, I could get to it. I wasn’t just walking in place.”

J.T. always seemed to think we were talking to him. I didn't know if that was a ghost thing or just his personality.

I knew that soon; we would have to make a plan. Having a very fragile specter in the house would complicate things.

“Excuse me,” I said. I squeezed my way past the ghost and into the hallway. “I’m going to go check on Isaac.

I wondered if Dina, Bobby, and The Stranger would know not to tell the ghost he was dead.

“I’m going to go tell him there was a survivor,” I said. “Not that that will cheer him up.”

I had to weigh the risks. At that moment, I knew that if Isaac came around the corner and saw the man with the crooked neck, he was liable to freak out. The others had experience. They might keep their cool.

Off-Screen.

Isaac was still sitting on the couch next to his sister. He had covered her with a blanket. No amount of logic would break through to him until he was ready. I couldn’t expect him to deal with his sister’s death in a way that was convenient.

“Hey, Isaac,” I whispered in his ear. “You need to know that one of the spirits is in the house. He doesn’t know he’s dead and we need to keep it that way. No screaming or freaking out. Got it?”

I felt like a jerk ordering him around as he mourned his dead sister.

He didn’t answer, but he nodded. Fat, round tears rolled down his cheeks, glistening in the moonlight.

I thought about how I had felt when Camden had died the first time when stabbed by Ranger Danger. I had cried then, but it wasn’t too long before my mind shifted to beating the storyline.

I wondered how long it would take Isaac to do the same. He was the next target.

Or was he?

The Stranger’s Dark Secret trope was supposed to drop his Plot Armor to zero when he revealed his titular dark secret, but I couldn’t actually see his Plot Armor. It was hidden. All I could see were his two visible player tropes. I couldn’t even see his poster.

I had originally assumed that The Stranger’s Dark Secret was that he had initiated The Ten Second Game, but then there was the whole thing where he got dodgy about the voicemail his daughter sent him. That told me he still had a secret. Reading over the text of the trope, I began to realize that he wasn’t allowed to just tell us his Dark Secret Off-Screen. Even though as a player he would like for us to. We had to figure it out.

Luckily, I had already set up Cinema Seer with that prediction. If I was right, everyone but Bobby would get a buff to Grit and Savvy.

I was certain that there was something more to come. It had to be something that would make my character hesitant to work with him, even to survive.

I walked back into the room where the ghost was being interrogated by the others. They had not made much headway.

On-Screen.

“I was so scared,” he said. “You have no idea…”

It was like he was floating in the sea during a storm. He could talk to us and answer our questions. He even showed some personality. But then a “wave” would come and he would go back underwater. He would emerge suddenly very scared and mournful. Ghosts worked in cycles like that, apparently.

“How did you get stuck out there?” I asked.

“Girl I’m talking to right now. She’s a freak. 100% my type. Craziest girl I’ve ever tried to get with though. She’s into ghosts and witches and all kinds of weird shit. I’m not complaining. She’s hot. She wanted me to come here and help her talk to some famous ghost. I couldn’t chicken out, not when I got her on the line.”

His head wasn’t on straight, but still, he smiled and licked his lips every time he paused his sentence. When he laughed, his head bounced slightly.

“All I got to do is play this weird game she found on the internet. Spooky sure. I figure when it doesn’t work she'll be disappointed but, you know, we got all these rooms…. Things could really work out well for me. But the game worked. There were things out there. Something I couldn’t understand. She’s writing down their answers. Ring the bell. Don’t ring the bell, you know.”

I nodded. I understood why The Ten Second Game used a bell to communicate yes or no answers. Ghosts were oversharers.

“Then things started getting freaky. Not in the way I wanted. Started thinking, woah, is this girl worth it? My ex wasn’t this much trouble and she had two kids from different baby daddies… I wonder how they are. I kind of miss them not gonna lie. I couldn’t make things work with my ex she was way older than me… like thirty, but those kids were great. I always wonder if I should have stuck around just for them. The little one, Justin, he asked if he could call me dad and I said no. He was my little buddy. Why did I say no? Fuck. Why did I say no? I could have been a good dad…”

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He paused for a moment and then started back in. “I was so scared. You wouldn’t blame me if you knew. I had to run. That thing… it isn’t like anything I… I had to run.”

He was having difficulty keeping on topic.

“You said that something freaky started to happen when playing the game?” I asked.

“It was out there. Took Sid so long to figure out. We thought we were talking to a dozen different ghosts, but it was that… whatever it was the entire time. I couldn’t even understand what I was looking at. We saw one ghost get really close. And we talked to it. And it got closer and closer. We asked it questions. It was some lady that drowned. Her face was all messed up from something. Then she got closer and we could see something in the darkness standing right behind her. So close behind her we almost couldn’t see it. Like it was hiding behind her. And then she got closer and Sid was asking her about her life and whether she knew this famous guy. And then she got closer… and I heard it. It was laughing. Black like a shadow in an old photo. So close to her, I couldn’t make it out. And then I saw the stitches like the body of this dripping wet woman was sewn right to him. And he was laughing because he tricked us! He tricked us into letting him get close!”

J.T. was breathing faster and faster. He was terrified of whatever it was he was picturing in his mind.

“And then he got close enough to where I could see that behind him, somehow, I couldn’t understand, there were more dead people sewn to him. The drowned woman disappeared and then some prospector dude who had been crushed in a cave-in or something, he came out, sewn on like the others. He was trying to talk, to yell at us, but his jaw and teeth were ruined. The dead people sewn to that thing were all wiggling and scared and he could make them move and talk…. I ran. I turned and ran. A dead biker was standing right behind me, face and shoulder ground down to nothing but hamburger meat. The thing was right behind him. So close I couldn’t see it except at the very edge. I strained to get a look but I couldn't. It was so close behind him and hiding. We had nowhere to go but out. So Sid opened the window and we ran.”

He was paralyzed with fear.

“The dead all showed how they died. You could see it. I don’t want to end up like that. Is that what happens to the people we love? They end up walking out there dead, body parts cut up and gross.”

He paused. A sudden realization dawned on his crooked face. He started to slowly reach up his right hand. He was going to feel his neck. We had let him go too far. Soon, he would realize he was dead and we would be in trouble.

“Was Sid the hot chick?” Bobby asked.

J.T. looked at him. There was a sudden shift.

“You have no idea. I don’t usually go for quiet chicks, but damn. She was like half goth ‘cause her mom died. I really dug it. The goth thing, not… you know. She wore sweaters and jeans a lot, but you could tell she had a body… damn… I hope it didn’t get her.”

“So you were one of Sidney’s friends,” The Stranger said.

The ghost turned to look at him. “Yeah, Sidney.”

The Stranger looked at me and then at the others. We knew that his daughter’s name was Sidney.

Off-Screen.

The ghost abruptly walked into the hallway. He wasn’t going anywhere in particular as far as I could tell. He just wandered from room to room like he was looking for something.

The rest of us went back into the living room with Isaac. He was standing over Cassie's body.

“We need to put her somewhere where she won’t be on camera. Maybe the storage room. I need help moving her,” Isaac said. “I don’t want it using her like a prop.”

“I’ll help,” Bobby offered.

But Isaac couldn’t bring himself to touch her corpse.

“Here,” Dina said. She waved him aside. Then she and Bobby carried Cassie’s body down the hall.

~-~

“You can’t tell us anything about your Dark Secret, can you?” I asked.

The Stranger shook his head.

I was going to have to keep working at it On-Screen. I had a theory. Assuming his secret was not yet revealed, the best time to do so would be in the middle of Rebirth. That’s what was supposed to happen at the midpoint according to the Plot Cycle. New information that reframes the narrative in some way.

Most of the time, we just watched the midpoint fly by. We never focused on making sure the midpoint revelation was meaningful. This trope might have been designed for just that. One big reveal.

Dina and Bobby returned and we discussed battle plans. It looked like we might be headed outside into the parallel world of the dead.

“Can we get more information out of J.T.?” Bobby asked. “I feel he knows more.”

“He does know more. He might know where my character’s daughter is or how to beat that thing,” The Stranger said.

“You guys might be right, but I don’t think we’ll get the opportunity. Carousel isn’t going to let us have another scene with him unless it's interesting. It might get repetitive,” I said. “I’m going to give Constance a call. Her research trope takes time to kick in. We need to figure out what can be used to defeat ghosts and that thing. Let’s not forget that Antoine’s still out there. Our characters will probably think Kimberly is too.”

“How do we know Antoine isn’t dead?” Isaac asked.

“Carousel targets the person with the lowest Plot Armor unless a trope intervenes or even if—”

“Me,” he said.

He had 11 Plot Armor. Even lower than mine.

I nodded. “Unless he starts a fight with a ghost, he’s not going to be targeted. We’re Off-Screen. For all we know Antoine is On-Screen right now fighting for his life.”

“With a baseball bat,” Dina said. "Against ghosts."

“He’s fast,” Bobby said. “With his Hustle, he can outrun anything out there.”

I agreed. What we didn’t say was that Antoine was very messed up from spending unimaginable amounts of time trapped in the Straggler Forest. His trope, You were having a nightmare… could help fight the trauma from that. In fact, it had already cured his catatonia. His trauma though wasn’t gone. It just looked for an opportunity to reemerge. Right that moment, Antoine was walking through the land of the dead, a place we had just been told had mystical geography. I just hoped he could hold on.

~-~

The moment we were back On-Screen, I was dialing Constance Barlow’s number. She had handed us her business card for emergencies. There could be no better emergency.

“Hello?” she asked groggily. “Who is this? Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Constance…. Ms. Barlow, this is Riley. You just dropped me and my friends off at the resort on the hill.”

“I remember. Is there something wrong?” she asked.

I wasn’t supposed to tell her the truth. Doing so would damn her. I had to make an excuse to get her to research the monster that J.T. Guzman had described.

“We were assigned a suite at the hotel that is supposed to be haunted. We knew that Carousel was big on spooky stuff—”

“Yes, our founder, Bartholomew Geist was a noted horror film producer, amateur occultist, and abysmal alchemist. We celebrate our unusual roots. Why do you ask?”

“Well, the hotel employee here has been going on about how haunted this place is, telling us about ghosts, and some strange monster that lives here. My friend Dina is really superstitious and maybe you could give her some closure. You have to understand. She lost her son years back. The idea that he might still be with us in some way… It would really put her mind at ease if you could give us some info about it all.”

“I see…”

I couldn’t tell whether she liked my clumsy excuse.

“You see this creature is supposed to hurt ghosts or something. Sew them to its body. She believes her son is still with her like a guardian angel. The idea of this thing… it’s really upsetting her. If you could just tell us about the legend and how to beat it, that would put her mind at ease.”

Constance breathed deeply.

“This is why entertaining all of this ghosts and goblins nonsense is unethical and unwise… oh… alright,” She said. “Tell me about this creature so I can research it. I am fairly well-read on local legends and such.”

I described the creature J.T. had told us about. How it sewed ghosts onto itself, seeming to hide behind them as a trick. How there was something confusing about how it looked, how it could have so many ghosts attached to its body and still hide behind one woman almost completely.

“You said it laughs?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “The hotel guy was very specific about that. It laughs because it tricked you.”

“It just so happens that I read something similar to that years ago. I just need to find the book… I need to get dressed and get to my study. I’ll look into this and call you back on this number. Is that okay?”

“Yes,” I said. “Oh, before I forget. How do you defend yourself against a ghost? Assuming one attacked you?”

“Assuming disbelief isn't effective, I haven’t the faintest idea. I’ll have to look into that as well.”

“Ok,” I said. “Thanks.”

I hung up the phone.

I needed to make a plan and I felt like I had a fraction of the information I needed to do that. We had to go find Antoine. That was the way forward. We had no choice. It wasn’t because that was the smart play. Staying in the house was the smart play. Except for one little problem.

If we stayed in the house, spirits would want to come speak with us. We couldn’t do that because we had searched the room after Kimberly and Antoine had disappeared.

The bell we needed to speak to the spirits was missing.

I needed Constance to call back. I needed to form a plan.

I needed more time.