Convincing people they were trapped in Carousel was a pain. We spent the better part of an hour explaining it to them one bit at a time. They actually looked excited at first, like they thought this was some type of interactive LARPing game that the town was putting on. Come to Carousel! Survive horror movies. Win a prize! That type of thing.
I had a bright idea to show them my hoodie pockets that had been upgraded with my Luggage Tag. So many items went in, a tape player, my sunglasses, three ice-cold Dr. Peppers. Yet, there was no visible bump to show that anything was in my pocket.
I even took off the hoodie so that they could feel its pockets were empty. Then, I put it back on and pulled out the items again.
Unfortunately, that plan was short-sighted.
"Okay, Chris Angel," Isaac said. "You can make some objects seem to disappear in your pocket, which obviously means that we are trapped in an interdimensional torture prison based on horror movies. Am I understanding that right? That checks out... Do you know any card tricks?"
"I tried," I said in shame.
Unfortunately, much of the magic in Carousel was subtle. It was movie magic. Most of what we could show them looked like sleight of hand or deception. A devoted stage magician could do the trick with the hoodie easily. I was left feeling like a fool.
"Your turn," I said, looking to the others. "Can I see that letter from your brother again?" I asked Cassie.
She handed it to me cautiously. I got the sense that she felt something was up. She just wasn't ready to really believe us yet.
I tried to tune out the conversation going on around me. My friends, especially Kimberly, given that she was the most sociable, were trying to convince Cassie and Isaac that Carousel was not as it seemed. It wasn't going well.
"Oh, right," Isaac said with a laugh and a glance at his sister. "The town is haunted. It's real spooky. We get it. Andrew told us about the celebration being like Halloween or something."
"Look, I understand it's hard to believe," Antoine said, "Just give us a chance. Have an open mind."
Cassie gently said, "Isaac is always like this. Don't take his sass personally. You have to understand though, that this sounds like the setup of a prank."
Kimberly and Antoine looked at each other.
I read over the letter that Cassie and Isaac had received from their brother again. They were being good sports about the whole thing so far. I half expected them to laugh us off the porch the moment we told them what Carousel was.
I had a different tactic. Carousel liked to hide messages wherever it could. The letter from their brother seemed a great place for one. I wasn't sure if these two had been invited by Carousel itself or by our Friends in High Place (the Insider, whatever we were calling the person who was guiding us from the shadows).
Still, I searched the letter up and down. It was written hastily on stationery. It was kind of hard to read. No message jumped out at me at first:
(the transcript is below if you don't want to decipher it)
image [https://i.postimg.cc/mrH7v0BG/0003-Page-1-Hughes-1.png]
image [https://i.postimg.cc/Z5grDTkc/0004-Page-2-Hughes-2.png]
Reading through it was a nightmare. Cassie had warned me that her brother's writing was tough. I wasn't ready for this. I noticed there were several misspellings. In fact, all of the errors were due to missing letters. I decided to power through the whole letter searching for missing characters.
It took a while.
(Transcript)
> Hey Isaac & Cassie,
>
> Just got your letter – talk about timing! Reading about your recent escaades was the highlight of my week (Isaac, how did you even convince Cassie to try kyaking?). I'm sory I haven’t written back sooner. Life here at Hallowed Heart as a resident is non-stop, but I always make time to catch up on your adventures, even if it's just in my thoughts.
>
> Now, onto some exciting news and a fantasic plan! You mentioned you're both free early next month, right? Perfect timing, because Carousel's Centennil Celebration is happening then, and I’m somehow in charge of a booth. I know, I know, it sound like a typical Andrew situation. But here’s the deal: I need your help. Think of it as a mini family reunion, but with more confeti and cotton candy. The whole thing is spooky and horror themed. Like Halloween and the Fourth of July had a baby. How can you resist?
>
> Okay, so logistcs – because we Hughes always need a plan. The streets into Carousel ar going to be closed for the festival (classic sall-town shenanigans), so you’ll have to park nearby and walk to the Olde Hill Bed and Breakfast. Trust me, the stroll is worth it; the views are postcard-perfect.
>
> Now, don’t forget about the tickets. Here’s the fun part: yu’ll find this kooky ticket machine that looks exactly like a fortune-teller’s booth. I can almost hear it prediting, "Cassie will return the book she borrowed from her brother two years ago." Grab your tickes there; it’s hard to miss!
>
> Since you’ve let me know when you're coming, I'll do everything humanly possible to meet you at the B&B. If, for sme unlikely reason, I’m still stuck at the hospital, one of the friedly faces from the B&B will guide you to where we'll be set up in the town square.
>
> I can't wait to see you both. Having the three of us together again – it's going to be smething special. You guys are the best siblings a guy could ask for, and I'm super excite to create more memories, Hughes-style!
>
> This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
>
> Counting the days,
>
> Your brother who's always here, even when he's running around like a headless chicken,
>
> Dr. Andrew Hughes (You have to call me Doctor now, remember?)
Then I had to figure out what it all meant. I was trying my best to do it quickly, piecing together the clues. It was the type of puzzle Carousel was so fond of--the type you would find if you looked but overlook if you didn't. Reading the hand-written letter made it especially hard to find it. If it was all typed out I would have gotten it a lot faster.
"Are you seeing the red wallpaper yet?" Bobby asked. "I just ignored it when I got here. I wish I hadn't..."
Bobby was a friendly voice, but as he spent much of the conversation playing with those dogs that had belonged to his character, he wasn't exactly doing much to convince Cassie and Isaac of the truth of Carousel.
"Red wallpaper?" Isaac laughed. "What the heck are you talking about?"
Cassie didn't look so certain. At the mention of the red wallpaper, she got a concerned look on her face as she stared off into the distance.
"Look," I said, "I know this is hard to believe. I didn't truly believe what was going on here until I saw Dina's head get cut off by a scarecrow. Then her body reanimated and started chasing me."
"That was about the time I started believing too," Dina said with a faint smirk.
"If you don't believe us, that's okay," I said. "But look at this real quick. If it doesn't make you at least a little curious, we'll leave you alone, alright?"
Antoine gave me a quick look that I interpreted as "You had better know what you're doing."
I turned around the letter that they had let me read.
"Written out long-hand it's kind of hard to tell, but this message has a lot of letters missing. The 'p' from escapades, the 'c' from predicting, the 'n' from friendly," I said.
"So what?" Isaac said, "He's a doctor. You're lucky to be able to read it at all."
"For sure, but if you actually keep track of the missing letters, there's a coded message," I said.
"A message?" Cassie asked. She wasn't just looking at me. She was looking past me, getting glimpses of the red wallpaper, no doubt. She was adapting to it pretty quickly.
"partastiemoctonod," I spoke very slowly as I put together the missing letters. "partastiemoctonod. Whatever. If you read it backward, it says... 'Do not come, it's a trap."
Cassie and Isaac looked at each other. I might have finally caught them off-guard.
She snatched the letter back out of my hands and started double-checking my work. Isaac read over her shoulder.
I gave Antoine a nod.
"I don't understand. This has to be a..." Cassie said. "If it's a trap... why would he try to warn us?"
"It's weird," Kimberly said. "Carousel has a strange code it abides by. It gives warnings. Omens... It's all fake though. The warnings are almost never enough. The omens can trick you."
"It's the illusion of fairness. The illusion of consent," I added. "It's a common theme here."
Isaac took the letter from Cassie after she was finished. He was grabbing handfuls of his own hair, tugging gently, then running his fingers back over his head in a sort of petting gesture. This had gotten to him.
"So where is Andrew?" Cassie asked desperately.
I was not the right one to answer. This was a delicate topic.
"I'm so sorry," Kimberly said, reaching her hands out to Cassie's. "If he was here, he's probably trapped in a story somewhere. He's waiting to be rescued."
Kimberly wisely left out the word 'dead'. If I were to guess, the running around like a headless chicken comment from his letter might have been Carousel's tongue-in-cheek way of telling us exactly how he died, but I couldn't tell them that.
"Isaac," Cassie cried out, turning back toward her brother who was still reading through the letter, trying to disprove what I had said. She reached out to embrace him. "What if they're telling the truth?"
"They're not!" Isaac said. "They can't be. This is bullshit. It’s a prank. It’s his handwriting so he must have put them up to this?"
He had moved onto a different theory altogether. The "it's a prank" theory. At least we had left the "it's part of the spooky holiday" stage.
“No,” Antoine said. “We’ve never met him.”
“Isaac,” Cassie said again softly. She reached for his arm. “I don’t think they’re lying.”
“They have to be!” he said sharply.
“I have another idea,” I said. “I think it’ll prove that what we’re saying is true.”
“What is it?” Antoine asked.
“We need to go for a walk,” I said, flicking my gaze toward the back of the property.
Antoine understood immediately.
----------------------------------------
“What exactly is back here?” Isaac asked.
“You’ll see,” I said.
In the distance, the overgrown cemetery waited. I had to hope that it had not been reset in the night after we left. As we drew close, we were greeted by the faint groans of something in the distance. I could hear the sounds of rope straining as something hanging from it writhed back and forth.
We didn’t have to go far. In fact, we didn’t even have to step over the stone boundary of the graveyard to see them.
In the distance, the undead hung from trees where Bradley Speirs and the other grave robbers had hung them up for target practice. They had reanimated because of Samantha Cole's Damsel trope, but, being unable to return to their graves, they never went back to eternal slumber.
They hung from nooses, bungee cords, and at least one electrical cord, lined up like targets. Large chunks were missing from their flesh and their clothes were peppered with holes from the gunshots.
“Oh my god!” Cassie exclaimed, covering her face with her hands. Her many rings clicked together as she did so.
We were twenty yards from the zombies.
“They’re just… they’re lawn ornaments,” Isaac said. He was clearly starting to doubt himself.
“We shouldn’t get too close,” Antoine said. “They aren’t exactly friendlies.”
It was true. Our interests had been aligned temporarily with them, but they were not our allies.
“Just look at them,” I said. “Really focus. Do you see something in your mind?”
They were skeptical, but they did as I asked. Cassie must have. She was crying.
“The Avenging Dead,” she read off the red wallpaper.
“No, no,” Isaac said. “This is… fake obviously. Easy to fake. I’ve seen better work in student films.”
I remembered being in his shoes.
Something rustled in the distance. One of the bushes that grew in the graveyard started to move.
“We need to go,” Antoine said, he had his bat at the ready.
We turned to run. Even Isaac joined us in fleeing despite being adamant that we were lying to him.
“Wait,” Bobby said. His canine friends had tagged along. They were whining, pacing back and forth at the stone divider that was inset into the ground around the perimeter of the cemetery.
I stopped running just in time to see what creature had been moving in the distance.
Soon, it emerged.
It was a dog. An undead dog. The one Bradley had shot.
Cassie screamed again as it ran toward us. Couldn’t blame her there.
The living dogs waited excitedly for their departed friend to join them. When it got close, it stopped.
“It can’t pass the border,” I observed from its tropes. It had nothing to avenge. It also had no grave to rest in. It could only wait, trapped in the cemetery by some arbitrary magic from another world.
Slowly, we crept back toward the dogs. The living ones were working up the courage to cross over into the cemetery and the undead one struggled and fought its boundary to no avail. The dogs moaned excitedly to see their friend.
“How?” Isaac asked as he stared at the dogs greeting and sniffing each other.
Faking some swinging bodies in the distance was possible. Faking a walking, moving, whining dog that was visibly missing half its skull and brain? Not as easy.
“You see that in any student films?” Antoine asked.
----------------------------------------
Back at the bed and breakfast, Isaac had grown quiet. Cassie was still crying. The real purpose of our little field trip had been to jumpstart their ability to see the red wallpaper. Even if the undead didn't change their minds, the haunted vision of some fancy red wallpaper probably did. We couldn't fake something in their minds.