“How much time do we have before something happens?” Kimberly asked.

With the arrival of new players, we knew that Carousel would soon do something to attract them to the Tutorial. My friends and I had been shepherded into a storyline before that could happen, cutting short the process. This time, however, the Tutorial was inevitable.

“Let me think,” Antoine said as he took a moment for mental calculations, “When we were intercepted by Arthur and the others after we arrived, it took us maybe an hour to get into The Final Straw II. I assume we have more time than that though. The vets wouldn’t have risked cutting things too close. So we probably have at least some time.”

“That’s the best guess I have too,” I said. “The section on the Tutorial in the Atlas doesn’t say how long it takes for someone to come pick up newbies, so I assume it isn’t something we need to know. We also know that these two will be forced into a storyline at some point, so we had better start heading in that direction.”

With new players, we knew the next step. The Tutorial. With as much as we had been through it was kind of funny that the tutorial was is something that sent chills down our spines. It was jarring to find out that for all our time in Carousel, we had only just begun. I wasn't sure what we would find. I was excited. I was afraid. Mostly, I was curious.

He stood on the front porch. None of us really had much luggage. We had left that at Camp Dyer. I wished that there was some way we could further prepare for what was about to happen, but we couldn't.

Antoine jumped up and down and shook his arms out as if he were trying to shake the nervousness right out of his body. Kimberly stood with her arms folded trying to make herself small.

“Hope you guys are ready for this,” Dina said she looked excited and intense. “We only get one shot. No one is left to help us.”

I wished she would at least act like she wasn't thrilled.

“I need to put out food for the dogs,” Bobby said. “I figure we could be gone for days, right? Digger doesn’t need much; he’s pretty small. Barkley needs the special breed stuff for his coat but there isn’t much left of that. I wish we had more time.”

He headed off toward the dog pens to get them all ready.

“Wait,” Kimberly said after he had left, “Won’t the whole B&B reset after we leave? Does putting food out help?”

I shrugged. I wasn’t going to stop him. “Just let him have this," I said.

“I’ll carry the Atlas,” Antoine said, stuffing it into the duffel bag I had found for him. It was likely the safest place for it, though the book weighed so much I wasn’t sure if the magic of the Luggage Tags would even protect it. They were designed to stack so you could upgrade a bag to hold more and more weight. Between the book and his bat, he might have already exceeded his ten pound limit.

“Everybody good?” Antoine asked.

“I…” Isaac started to say, but then he lost his train of thought. Both he and his sister were still in shock. Now we were shoving them out the door.

I just wanted to get them out of here and on the way to town before they tried making a run for it like Jeanette had when we got here.

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

“Do you need help with your bags?” I asked as Isaac and Cassie started picking up their belongings.

Isaac shook his head and started walking out toward the road. I had trouble reading his mental state, but I didn't think that any of the options were good. He was either scared or paranoid or angry or all of the above.

“I’m good,” Cassie said gently. She was still having a hard time. “I packed light.”

I started to walk toward the road where the others were headed. I stopped short.

“It’s okay to be scared,” I said. “Bad things will happen, but you can work and plan. We can keep going.”

I wasn’t the one who should have been trying to make anyone feel better. My greatest accomplishment in life had been learning to feel nothing. I didn’t know what to say.

“When you all said that we have to die…” she started.

I thought about how Arthur had treated the subject when we got there, he and Adaline both. They never tried to assure us that we would survive. They never gave us false hope to cling to.

“You die. It hurts and it sticks with you,” I said. “You never really get used to it, but you hesitate less. I’m sorry.”

That didn’t exactly lift her spirits. She moved some of the dark hair out of her eyes and then started walking forward.

I wished I had better news for her.

We walked out to the road. The others were waiting.

Bobby walked along with the four dogs in tow. As he stepped over the threshold separating the B&B from the road, the dogs stopped, sat, and watched him. When he noticed, he looked back to them with a look of defeat on his face. Perhaps he had hoped they would follow him further into Carousel.

They were NPCs and had scripts and rules of their own. Of course, I had no idea what a dog’s script looked like. Whatever it looked like, it told them not to leave the setting of their story.

“So we hoof it,” Antoine said when we saw nothing in the distance.

And we did.

For the second time in my life, I walked the Olde Hill Road toward Carousel. It was later in the day than it had been the first time. Darkness was coming quickly.

We joked idly that Carousel had forgotten us. Of course, there was a shadow of hope in our voices as we did.

However, when night finally came, we saw the lights.

Two fiery globes floated toward us down a large stretch of road. I checked and double-checked that it wasn’t an Omen.

It wasn’t until the lights got closer that we heard the sound of hoofbeats and wheels in the distance.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

Sure enough, as we waited longer, we saw that the floating lights were actually lanterns attached to the front of a large, black carriage that was being pulled by two jet-black horses. Sitting behind the horses was a young man who wore Victorian garb including a top hat. His clothes were all black, of course.

We moved to the side of the road as he approached. I was holding my breath unintentionally.

As the carriage got to us, the young man said, “Welcome, dear travelers, to the gateway—”

He didn’t quite manage to get the horses stopped as he passed us. “Shoot,” he said loudly as he pulled on the reins to get the horses stopped. He looked back at us. “I’m sorry. Just a second.”

He stood and turned toward us and nervously said, “Welcome, dear travelers, to the gateway of Carousel. I am your humble conveyer through the veils of reality and fantasy, the charioteer to escort you to the Centennial Celebration. Please, step inside my carriage and leave your disbelief behind."

He jumped down from the driver’s seat of the carriage and opened the door. “Now you're supposed to get in,” he said. “Wait, are you not visitors? I’m only supposed to get visitors. Sorry, it’s my first time.”

He was young. He must have been a teenager. He was gangly, with acne that had been covered in a faint, white face paint to make his face pop against the night sky. On the red wallpaper, he was a basic NPC named Kenny Patcher.

“We are visitors,” Antoine said.

“Good,” Kenny said, taking off his hat and bowing. “The actual Centennial Celebration doesn't start until tomorrow, but we heard some people were coming early. That must be you. This carriage ride is free if you’re interested.”

This was it. We all looked at each other. Antoine got on first. The rest of us followed. It was a high step. By the time Antoine, Kimberly, and I had climbed up into the carriage, Kenny remembered there was a stepping block he was supposed to put out to help us get into the carriage, so he scrambled to get it set out for the others.

“Okay,” he said nervously. He closed the door and fiddled with something I couldn’t see. He climbed back into the driver’s seat. There was a rectangular hole that allowed us to see him up there.

The carriage was nice. It almost felt like we really were just on a fun little ride up to a festival somewhere. There was an antique device that looked like an old radio with a tape player.

Kenny brought us back almost to the parking lot so that he could find a place to turn around. I half expected Cassie and Isaac to bail but they didn’t.

“Alright,” Kenny said, turning his head back to us to yell, “Carousel used to celebrate its founding with something called Carousel's Eve. This was years ago before my time. It was a big deal to the Geists because they were all into showbiz. Carlyle, the founder’s son, recorded this story to play on the radio, but we decided to play it to people visiting Carousel during the Centennial. Just a second.”

As the carriage wheels ground against the gravel road, the young driver, with nerves like taut strings, clumsily reached out behind him and summoned life into the old tape player with a twist of a knob. The sound sliced through the static and the voice of Carlyle Geist filled the space around us.

"Ah, good evening, my esteemed guests," boomed Carlyle's voice, its resonant timbre enveloping us like a cloak, "I bid you a chilling welcome to the spectral soiree of our not-so-simple Carousel. I stand before you, albeit merely as a voice from this recording, to serve as your host on this eerie carriage ride. I shall tell a story so chilling, so steeped in truth, that it threatens to freeze the very marrow within your bones and alter your understanding of the realm of the living and the dead. This is, of course, assuming the stories passed down by my father hold a kernel of truth."

His voice, as it floated through the carriage speakers, bore an uncanny resemblance to the Ghost Host from the Haunted Mansion, deep and haunting. This man was obviously an entertainer.

"Our story unfurls many decades ago, shrouded within the opaque embrace of a bygone era, one that has since been swallowed by the mists of time and obscurity. It begins with my progenitor, the enigmatic Bartholomew Geist, who, through fate or fortune, came to lay claim to this land. This legacy was an unusual one, bestowed not by blood relations but by the contractual pen of a banker—a figure of mystery named Silas Dyrkon, a man—if he could indeed be called a man—whose very existence seemed as ethereal as the fog that slinks across the moors when day gives way to night."

At the mention of Silas Dyrkon, my friends and I glanced at each other with raised eyebrows. Silas as in the Mechanical Showman?

"Dealing with Mr. Dyrkon was a peculiar affair. He and my father were strangers in the flesh, their interactions limited to the curious dance of ink on paper and the distant, often distorted, exchanges over the telephone wire. Letters from Mr. Dyrkon were crafted in eloquent, almost hypnotic language, while phone conversations were infused with his voice that twisted and turned like the unpredictable winds, each word dripping with the promise of untapped wonders. My father, whose heart and mind were always chasing the fantastical, was seduced by the enigma that these communications presented and the strange land that seemed ripe for the taking."

Carlyle’s laughter broke through, a sharp crack that seemed to acknowledge the absurdity of the narrative he wove.

“If I may interject a slice of cynicism, it was likely the lure of riches that beckoned my father, not fantasy. But let it be said, every man is entitled to narrate his life's tale in the manner he sees fit. And my father's rendition was always drenched in the hues of the mysterious, a life replete with unexpected turns and thrilling escapades."

As the carriage trundled along the gravel path, the air grew biting, a reminder that it was autumn in this part of Carousel.

"Upon his peculiar arrival, my father beheld a nameless draft of land that was little more than a scattered jigsaw of desolate homesteads and a smattering of forlorn shops, each one silent as a grave. The eerie stillness suggested that the residents had been taken by an otherworldly force, leaving behind a frozen snapshot of their daily existence. The fields lay fallow, untouched but for the phantoms of crops long since failed to be harvested."

I huddled closer within my hoodie as Carlyle's words painted a vivid and unsettling picture in my imagination.

"The silence here was omnipresent, a silence so tangible it seemed to adhere to one's very skin. At the center of this somber tableau stood an unfinished clock tower, a monolith that watched over the scene with an air of accusation, its hands perpetually pointing to the hour of the supernatural. It was amidst this quietus that my father envisioned his grand dream—not a carousel adorned with gilded horses and the merriment of fairground music, but a Carousel that would be a haven for souls of every stripe. A place to celebrate not just sublime but also the grotesque, a veritable playground for those with an appetite for the peculiar and otherworldly."

Another laugh from Carlyle, perhaps even more sardonic than the last, sliced through the cold air.

"My father, always the consummate showman, may have been inclined towards the dark and dramatic, but he was no warlock. His correspondence with Mr. Dyrkon sowed the seeds of his grandiose vision. And though it seemed as if some archaic sorcery was at play, the transformation of this ghost town into a bustling hub of life was a result of something far more mundane. The prospect of employment, and the dream of owning land, these were the spells that drew workers and their families to us. They, much like yourselves on this night, became part of the enduring legacy of my family’s peculiar and morbid fascination."

Carousel had been a ghost town before Bartholomew Geist purchased it from the bank if the story was to be believed. Interesting.

"And thus, from the ghostly quiet, the Carousel began to spin, its web catching all manner of—"

The carriage hit a bump. The tape player started to rewind back to the beginning. Kenny quickly turned it off. “Oh, sorry. This thing is finicky. Just a second. He fiddled with it behind his back and tried to make it continue playing.

“It’s not your fault,” Kimberly said.

“Sorry… oh my gosh. Okay, so the rest of the story is on a display in town square if you want to read it. Something about a curse. I’m sorry for the.. uh … malfunction. You didn’t miss much. The town grew. The Geists started making movies here. This tape was from before the fire. Oh right, the fire! You can read about that in town too.”

The poor guy looked petrified at the failure of the tape.

“Is that story true?” Bobby asked. “Did Bartholomew Geist really find the original town abandoned?”

“Oh,” the driver said, “I don’t know. I wasn’t around. I mean, you know that, sorry. Never really questioned it. Geist was the founder of the town. That’s what they teach in class, at least. I don’t know about anything before that.”

He paused for a second. “You know, there is an old graveyard south of town square near the old Geist estate. Maybe you could look there. Who knows.”

Just as he finished speaking, I saw something on the red wallpaper change. Under the “Now Playing” section, an entirely new section appeared called: “Leads”.

Leads

The Founder’s Tale.

> Informational Display [!]

>

> Cemetery on Geist Estate [?]