“Come here, boy,” Bobby said. “You can do it!”

The tall wolfhound from the Permanent Vacancy B&B stepped over the boundary they were previously unable to cross. It joyously hurled itself into Bobby’s arms. He nearly fell back onto the ground as the beast put its full weight against him.

Bobby looked happy. That’s all that mattered.

We had trekked across the town so that Bobby could check in on his dogs. He fed them, played with them, and talked about his plans with them for at least an hour. The rest of us hung out on the porch of the B&B and waited.

Bobby had been asking for an escort over here for days. We finally relented when the news told us the roads were opening back up.

“There’s still Dr. Pepper in here,” I said as I sat back down in one of the chairs. “Otherwise, it hasn’t been reset at all.”

It felt like a lifetime since that simple discovery of Earth-branded soda had brought me so much joy.

“Something happened to Samantha,” Kimberly said. What a change. I wanted to talk about meaningless drivel, and my friends wanted to talk about heavy stuff. “She knew something bad would happen to her. I could see it in her eyes.”

“Maybe she’s on the run,” Antoine said. “Staying one step ahead of Carousel.”

“Maybe,” Kimberly said.

I stayed out of it. To my knowledge, Samantha had been axed for helping us escape or something similar to that. Either way, I wasn’t going to start theorizing.

“How is the whole dog thing going to work?” Cassie asked. “Did the other players do things like that?”

“Vicious dogs are a staple of all good horror movies,” Isaac said.

“Some of them,” I said. “Not usually the main characters that have them, though.”

“He’s not a main character,” Antoine said. “He’s a veterinarian who specializes in large breed dogs.”

"Well," Isaac said, "He does have first-hand experience."

As Bobby’s license stated, if a dog got killed or hurt On-Screen, it would backfire on us, especially if our characters put the dogs in danger. That didn’t mean they couldn’t be used, but they were a liability.

Still, I wasn’t going to try to tell him that. So far, he had been pretty realistic. He wouldn’t bring the dogs with us until we had a place to stay. He would tell the dogs to leave at the first sign of danger, stuff like that.

I tried to be optimistic.

“We’re going to the graveyard after this, right?” Cassie asked.

I nodded. We had some threads to pull over there. I wasn’t as optimistic about that. So far, the little to-do list Carousel gave us was very scant and vague. Things weren’t going to be that easy.

After we waited for Bobby to finish, we headed back across town toward the general area where we knew the main Geist estate to have stood. It was hard to miss. The whole property was surrounded by black wrought iron.

The Geist estate graveyard was so far away from the ruins of the mansion that I couldn’t even see the building. We never even caught a glimpse of it. It was truly a beautiful graveyard, though.

Truly.

Not just in the way normal people might appreciate a solemn place to remember deceased loved ones but in the sense that it looked like a wonderland where ghosts and ghouls could roam freely. Leaves blew in the wind, covering the ground in a crisp orange blanket. The graves were expensive and expressive. Each was a work of art. There were busts of dead Geists here and there. In fact, there were all manner of statuary spread around. If The Grotesque had been set here, we would have lost for sure. Street signs would lead you to different branches of the family, from the main Geists to the Carraways and the Madrigals, who were Geist cousins.

The graveyard was divided between a section labeled "Lost, but not forgotten" and a section titled "Forgotten, but not lost," which was a pauper's grave from what I could tell. How generous of the Geists.

Much of the cemetery was cordoned off, likely because they were sets for various storylines and not genuine parts of the Geist graveyard.

It took us thirty minutes of walking under the overcast sky to find the main branch with all of the right dead Geists.

None of it made sense. Many graves had to be older than Carousel itself, or at least they were older than the current claimed age of Carousel. The dates were worn down even if the names and strange inscriptions weren’t.

We found a large monument to the Geists who died in a blaze in 1984. Black humanoid figures danced freely atop a large fountain that had run dry years ago. They didn’t have individual graves as I was hoping. Lillian Geist’s name was on the monument, though someone had taken a chisel or something to it to deface it. That might have been a good clue had we come here first.

“There’s nothing here,” I said after we had investigated every grave. I meticulously wrote down the name of every Geist in that section, including dates. It would give us a rough estimate of who died when, but I had been wanting something else—something more.

“What were you hoping for?” Antoine asked, holding Kimberly in his arms as they surveyed the gloomy grounds.

I shrugged and moved a clump of leaves off of one of the grave markers with my shoe. “I was thinking we would find a grave for Lillian Geist, but we know she didn’t actually die in the fire. One of us would ask, 'if she didn’t die in 1984, then what’s buried underneath her grave marker?' Then we dig it up and… treasure or clues or something. I don’t know.”

Antoine chuckled.

“Didn’t quite work out like you planned,” Dina said. She walked over the graves like a ghost, reading every one of them somberly. “These people bred like rabbits. There must be cousins, second cousins, all of their extended family. There’s no way all of these people are Bartholomew Geist’s descendants.”

I could tell she noticed the same thing I did: a lot of Geist children just went missing. Not death dates, just a sad inscription pleading for their return.

“Doesn't really line up with the timeline,” Antoine said. “Geists were only here for sixty years. The town was only founded a hundred years ago. If the story is to be believed. This whole graveyard makes no sense.”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“They could have moved the older graves,” Kimberly said. “The ones with the dates worn off could have been transported. The mausoleums, too.”

That was true.

“Could just be props,” Bobby said. “A graveyard with twelve people in it doesn’t work as well in a movie.

That was also true.

“Could be that the Geists didn’t get here a hundred years ago,” I said. “The Throughline story isn’t supposed to be perfectly accurate.”

“It’s looking like a dead end, isn’t it?” Bobby said. “I was hoping it would be more than this.”

We got the tip to go to the graveyard from a random NPC who Bobby asked for information. It made some sense that the lead wouldn’t break the case, but still, finding a bunch of non-answers was disappointing. The only real benefit is that now I had a list of Geists. In the long run, the trip was worth it.

“Back to the drawing board then?” Isaac said. “What exactly was on the drawing board? I forget. Do we have any ideas?”

All eyes were on me. How many times could I fail to have the answers before they stopped doing that?

“I have some thoughts. I’m still working on them. They aren’t exactly organized yet,” I said.

“Let’s talk it out,” Antoine said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Alright… Let’s talk.”

I sat down on a small concrete bench that I only realized later was actually the tombstone sculpture for one of the Geists.

“Two weeks,” I said.

“Two weeks,” Antoine said. “That’s what Willis told us. We had to wait a couple of weeks.”

He had let go of Kimberly, and both of them stood with the others in a circle near where I was sitting. Isaac lay on the ground, looking up at the gray sky.

“Strange. Don’t you think so? Are we really thinking that Carousel is giving us a break? That’s too generous.”

Antoine shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe, but that’s about how long you have before you have to run a new storyline before… whatever happens if you don’t run storylines.”

“When the vets said they ran the Tutorial, even the vets in the Atlas, they talked about it like it was quick. Too quick. Back-to-back,” I said.

“So there’s something special about this run?” Kimberly asked.

I nodded. “I think that the Vets ran through the Tutorial after the Throughline had been advanced beyond it in the narrative. Like there’s a checkpoint for the plot, and once a team gets there, the stories from before stop repeating.”

“That’s what Curtis was talking about in the Atlas,” Kimberly said.

“Yeah… “ I said. “Which implies that this two-week break is not inherent to the Tutorial; it’s part of the Throughline. Once we get past it, future players won’t get the break.”

“That makes sense,” Antoine said, “I’m with you there, but that doesn’t explain anything. What are we supposed to spend the break doing? A séance?”

I nodded.

“That’s what I would think,” I said.

“But we can’t do the séance,” Cassie chimed in. She looked like the wind was chilling her to the bone. “Not without the murder weapon.”

“Right,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about that… Just stay with me. The continuity loop ensures that it is always the day before the Centennial, and it’s always the anniversary of Jed Geist’s death—every day, even today.”

The date of Jed Geist's death was always one day before the date on the mysterious Centennial time capsule that got buried thirty years ago.

“The only day we can talk to him is the day he died,” Antoine said, “Which is why we need to do the séance before things move forward.”

I pointed at him as if to say, “Exactly.”

“But,” I said, “If that’s true—if the trend we have observed about the continuity loop is correct—doesn’t that imply that there is a gap between the date of Jed Geist’s death and the beginning of the continuity loop?”

The actual reason for the continuity loop was to provide a suitable environment for Carousel to handhold terrified newbies into the game. Still, there also had to be an in-story reason for it.

“A gap?” Antoine asked.

I hoped I wasn’t overthinking it. It took me a while to figure it out. For the longest time, I assumed that the loop started on the day Geist died. That would explain why the Centennial never comes; the continuity loop started before it got here. But it couldn't have started on the day he died, either, because that would lead to a paradox, well, a bigger paradox than those inherent to the loop itself.

“The day after Jed Geist is murdered, the continuity loop couldn’t be started up yet, not unless it jumped a year into the future, which it could, but that isn’t consistent. The first day after Jed Geist died, was it the day after his death, or the anniversary of it? It couldn’t be the anniversary of his death and the day after his death.”

This led me to believe that the continuity loop had merely skipped a year forward on the day of his death, making it the anniversary and the day before the Centennial, but that didn't work either.

“Ooooh,” Bobby said.

“Yeah,” I said. “So the continuity loop, based on our understanding, must have been started between 1992, when Jed died, and 1995 when we ran the last storyline. I’m guessing it started exactly one year after his death.”

“On the first anniversary!” Bobby said.

“Right,” I said. “That’s why it’s always the anniversary of his death. That’s when the continuity loop started. It has to be. And what else happened around that time?”

“The fire poker was stolen from evidence,” Antoine said, nodding. He understood where I was going.

“So possibly in a very short time period, one year after his death, maybe two, but we’ll say one, the fire poker was stolen, the anniversary of Jed Geist’s death occurred, and the continuity loop started. You get where I’m going?”

“You think someone ran the ritual to talk to Jed Geist on the anniversary of his death using the murder weapon, which is why it is missing? And that was related to the continuity loop starting,” Antoine said.

I nodded.

“You know what else?” Bobby said. “The time capsule!”

I nodded again. I was glad they were following my logic. The time capsule was confusing. I still didn't understand it. It took me a while to realize that the capsule was the only proof that the original Centennial back in 1992 happened. The deaths that occured on that day could be retconned, but the time capsule was labeled with the Centennial.

“How did the time capsule get there?” Bobby said, “If the time loop—"

“Continuity loop,” I corrected.

“Right,” Bobby said, “If the continuity loop started the day Jed Geist died, how would the time capsule have been buried a day later? That’s how the dates line up, right? Answer: the loop didn’t start until a year after he died. The original Centennial did happen. The tragedy occurred. The capsule was buried. Except to most people, the tragedy was the 70th anniversary, not the centennial, because they’ve been in a loop for thirty years. They remember it because the disaster happened after Jed Geist died, but before the loop started.”

I shrugged my shoulders. I was hoping to reveal that myself, but I was glad to have some backup. “Basically, yes.”

“So someone talked to Jed Geist a year after he died,” Antoine said, “And that is related to the continuity loop, so, therefore, we need to figure out who was trying to talk to him and why. But there's just one problem.”

"The Centennial," I said.

"The Centennial," Antoine agreed.

"If the sequence of events was, Jed dies, the next day the original Centennial occurs, and a year later the continuity loop starts, then why is it always the day before the Centennial? Why does the continuity loop always keep the Centennial a day away if it already happened? That's why I always assumed the loop started the day of his death, the day before the original Centennial. But if it started a year later, then why does the continuity loop care about the Centennial? That should have been old news by the time it started."

"Can we get a chalkboard to diagram this?" Isaac said. "Not that I'm not loving the brainstorm."

"At the end of the day," Antoine explained, "Whatever is happening within the story of the Throughline caused the Anniversary of Jed Geist's death to repeat every day but prevents the Centennial and any anniversaries from ever happening again."

"Are we sure we aren't overthinking this?" Bobby asked. "Maybe Carousel just thought it would be cool."

I feared I was losing them and confusing myself. "The point is, someone talked to Jed Geist on the anniversary of his death. I think it happened one year after he died. That's all I got."

“Where does that leave us?” Dina said, ignoring Isaac.

All eyes on me again.

“I have a million ideas,” I said. “I was hoping you all would help me pick which one to go with. At the end of the day, we need to find out who contacted him on the anniversary of his death. Someone stole that fireplace poker for a reason and all evidence points to them doing the ritual to speak with him.”

“That's kind of a problem,” Kimberly said. “Haven’t kids been trying to talk to his ghost for decades now? It’s not a rare practice. Every NPC will know someone who tried.”

That was true. We could be following leads for weeks without getting anywhere.

“I can think of a certain psychic who was alive back then and may remember someone trying to speak to the dead,” Antoine said.

Right. Of course. The solution was talking to someone. No wonder it eluded me.

“Cassie,” Isaac said, “Sounds like you’re up.”

Cassie looked confused.

“Different psychic,” Kimberly said. “The one from the town square.”

Cassie looked relieved. She may have lightly stepped on Isaac’s pinky as he lay on the ground next to her.

In a town where everyone has tried to speak with the spirit of Jedediah Geist, we had to find the person who succeeded.