It didn't take long after acquiring the Carousel Atlas to figure out that the book was made for Scholars, not puny Film Buffs.

At first glance, it did look organized.

Everything was divided into sections based on spoilers, geography, and by topic. But beyond that, there was no way to navigate the massive tome.

There was no reference section in the back of the book like you would expect.

The best you could do was try to find something related to what you were looking for and see if that section pointed you to the section you were actually looking for. Scholars didn’t have to worry about that because they had the Eureka trope, which allowed them to move from page to page as if the location of any given fact was obvious.

We managed to find the monster lair entry pretty easily.

The problem was that there was no centralized map of monster lairs. There was just a long list that referenced locations by description rather than plotting it out so we could easily figure out where things were.

The reason for that was simple: the authors of the Atlas didn’t really care about monster lairs. That wasn’t an omission on their part; the fact was, as we read through the entry on monster lairs, we realized the subject of lairs just didn't come up a lot, which sounded insane.

There were literal monsters underneath the streets, in boarded-up houses, and hidden in the woods. But in Carousel, that was the last thing on your mind.

Omens would go out of their way to hunt you down and trick you if you didn’t have a good scout with you who could suss them out. Monster lairs, on the other hand, were not designed as traps.

After some research, it seemed that they were there for logistical reasons, as crazy as that might sound.

Or, as the man named Harley put it when he wrote the lair entry in the Atlas:

> “Carousel keeps its beasts under control. When they aren’t inside a storyline, they don’t leave their lairs—at least the non-human ones don’t. Sure, there are serial killers you pass by on the street and don't even know it. The monsters, though, are hidden, and the only hints that they exist are their roars at night and the occasional player who comes up missing because they couldn't follow directions.”

The fact was, my friends and I knew about monster lairs, although we didn’t often call them that.

After all, we lived on Dyers Lake for months. We knew there were things living in that lake, some of which were attached to omens, but others just swam through those haunted waters, an ominous reminder of what lay in wait in the depths of Carousel.

In fact, when the Black Snow Apocalypse had occurred, we had come across monsters fleeing their lairs to get out of the way of the upcoming apocalypse.

We heard howls in the night.

We heard screams coming from darkened windows in neighborhoods as we passed by houses.

However, we had never encountered a monster’s lair other than the sewers, which seemed to be home to many monsters, not that we had dealt with many of them.

“What exactly are we saying happened here?” Antoine asked.

We had been discussing Andrew Hughes’ team and their odd fate all morning, but we weren’t getting anywhere.

“I think it looks pretty straightforward,” I said. “I think they somehow wandered into the lair of some monster, and it chased them, killing two of them. Three managed to get to an omen, which triggered the storyline they ended up dying in because they only had three players and couldn’t win.”

Andrew Hughes, our target, had died in a storyline called Itch. It was a tough story, but it should not have been so far out of their grasp to justify their team's wiping, especially if they had done their research. The fact that they had apparently just run in there for refuge from some unknowable terror explained a lot.

“Are we safe to be over there?” Kimberly asked.

I had no idea.

“It’s hard to imagine why they would wander into the woods in the first place,” I said.

“Hunting, maybe,” Antoine said. “There are deer and wild boar in the woods, along with a lot of other things. The vets used to say that they would gather together hunting parties just to go get food back in the day.”

“Before they found Eternal Savers Club?” I asked.

“No,” Antoine said, “just for the variety. They wanted to go get fresh meat, and they had a few tropes that would help them do it.”

That sounded like the Vets. They were here so long that a hunting trip into monster-infested forests was something they would do.

Of course, there was probably a reason they had stopped doing it by the time we arrived, but they wouldn’t tell us something like that.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“I don’t think they were hunting in the woods,” I said, “but maybe they were on some kind of expedition. I don’t know why. The Atlas doesn’t seem to have anything going on over there except a few omens.”

Antoine flipped the Atlas around and looked through it.

“It is crazy to me that there is no way to look at a location and tell what lairs might be near,” Antoine said.

“I guess no one was looking for lairs,” I said. That was the only explanation I could come up with at first.

“Maybe the people who did go looking for monster lairs didn’t stick around long enough to write it down,” Antoine said.

Maybe. Wouldn’t be the only time someone died before being able to tell others why.

“So, what are our options?” Kimberly asked.

I looked at Antoine. He looked at me, and we both shrugged our shoulders.

“We could go take a look,” I said sheepishly.

“What?” Kimberly asked, appalled.

“If we know what they are, we can better guess what storyline they belong to,” I said. “We just need a peek.”

“Is that even true? Antoine asked. “Is knowing what the monster is even helpful? Is there a way to look up what type of monster is in each story?”

“No,” I said, and then it hit me. “Of course, they don’t have one place where you can look up where all the monster lairs are or which monsters are in which stories. That would all be spoilers. If you knew that there were vampires at the lumber mill, you would hugely be spoiling yourself about the nearby storyline.”

Lair location did correspond to the storylines the monsters belonged to, we knew.

“Oh, that’s probably it,” Antoine said. “Damn.”

The rules of what was spoilers and what wasn’t usually revolved around whether you got information from a trope or some other allowable source. Knowing what was allowed and what wasn’t took some guesswork.

“Whatever,” I said. “I don’t know why they wandered into a monster lair, but I don’t think there’s any evidence that the monsters just attacked them on the road. If they had, they probably would have attacked us when we were up there. So, unless we want to rescue a Monster Hunter so they can use their tropes to tell us what lives on that mountain, we may never know.”

“Well, we do know where some eyewitnesses are,” Antoine said, pointing across the table to the missing posters for Andrew Hughes and his two fellow players who had died with him in the storyline called Itch.

They would know what happened to their teammates, I had to assume.

At the end of the day, you could only be so cautious before you had to take action. I had no idea why their team had been attacked, but I couldn’t find any reason to think it would happen to us. Monster lairs were put out of the way so that players wouldn't run into them by accident.

There were only a few possibilities for what caused them to fall prey to some random beasties, and there was little chance of it happening again.

We decided to take a break. Investigating the monster lair wasn’t a priority. It was just a precaution.

We felt we had done our due diligence. It was time to move on.

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

Antoine and Kimberly were up on the roof as noon rolled around. They were making hot dogs or hamburgers or something. They had to do it now so that Isaac wasn’t around to burn things.

I was down in the loft, sitting at the table, searching the Atlas in vain for any reference I could find to “The Town of Carousel: Horrific Events Through the Ages.” Of all the books in Carousel, that was the one that I wanted the most.

I had seen Anna and Camden using it in Post-Traumatic, the storyline they had played through and eventually died in.

I had to believe that it was an important clue.

If I could just find it, it would give me valuable insights into how my two best friends could eventually be rescued.

As far as I could tell, using the book wouldn’t be a spoiler because I learned about the book by using a trope. It was my Film Buff trope that allowed me to watch trailers of other ongoing or recent storylines.

It had allowed me to see my friends in peril.

I could still watch that trailer on the red wallpaper at the end of The Strings Attached storyline.

It hurt to watch.

Camden was in bad shape. If only I could find that damn book.

I flipped the Atlas open to a page for the library, of which there were several. This one contained a flyer for some sort of event the library was hosting, but I couldn’t see what it was because so many other pieces of paper were attached to the page detailing the ongoings inside the marble building.

I couldn’t just go in and check out the book. There was a very powerful mobile omen in the library that would pretty much guarantee we would get postered.

Even the Vets were afraid of it. The problem was that the Vets’ method of avoiding that mobile omen, which was said to run around the library at knee height, was to play through another library omen that we were also too under-leveled to complete.

They would play through that second storyline and burn down the children's section of the library so that the mobile omen wouldn't be around to be a threat.

But if we couldn't do that, then what could we do?

I stared at the page, hoping that if I stared at it long enough, I would see the matrix and know exactly what we needed to do.

I stared at it for so long that I fell asleep.

“What are you researching?” Kimberly asked.

My head jutted up, alarmed. I looked around.

Kimberly had brought me a pork chop and potato salad.

“Just trying to figure out how to get a book out of the library,” I said.

“I always used my library card,” she said.

I gave her a polite chuckle.

“I’m afraid that’s not enough,” I said.

“What was the deal with the book again that you're trying to get?” Kimberly asked.

“It’s a prop that they used in the storyline that they died in,” I said. “Anna and Camden seemed to think it was important. If we can get a copy of it, maybe we will be that much more prepared.”

Kimberly nodded. “But we can't go in the library,” she said.

“Nope,” I said, “but I’ve got a plan.”

She waited eagerly for me to tell her about our heist.

“That mobile omen that gives us so much trouble in the library is only active during business hours,” I said. “So, if we were to get Dina to pick a lock, we could sneak in, and as long as we avoided the fairy tale section, we would be home free to find that book. Oh, and we would have to be careful not to ‘wake the books up,’ which means something ominous, I’m sure.”

“How dangerous is it?” she asked.

“It’s probably really dangerous, but it could help us in rescuing Anna and Camden.”

She thought for a moment, then she pulled out her cell phone, brushed away a piece of paper that had covered the library flyer, and started dialing a number.

Someone answered on the other end.

“Hello, Sue,” Kimberly said. “I was hoping to put a book on hold… Kimberly Madison… As soon as possible... It's called ‘The Town of Carousel: Horrific Events Through the Ages.’ I don’t know the author.”

She waited for a moment.

“You do?” she asked. “That’s great! When will we be able to pick it up?... That sounds great… Also, I know this is weird, but it would mean the world to me if you could have someone deliver it to us outside of the library. My friend is afraid of books... You are such a sweetheart. Thank you so much. We'll be there.”

She hung up her phone with a smile.

“We can pick it up tomorrow,” she said.

Of course, the solution was talking to people.

How did I always manage to forget that?

I thanked her, and she went back up to the roof.

Now, I had to research if Kimberly’s little plan would get us killed in some other way.