"So, what are you over here planning?" Kimberly asked after I had been sitting at the bar by myself for half an hour, piecing together a theory.

"Who says I'm planning anything?" I responded. "I'm just hanging out at the Speakeasy, like the rest of you, tying one on."

"Your status on the red wallpaper says planning," she said.

"Oh, right," I said. Who even remembered that that was one of the statuses? Maybe since I was always the one planning, I never saw it on other players.

"I remember it because it's always good to see the high-Savvy people planning things. Makes me feel safer. I assume you're thinking about the prophecy we got from Madam Celia or the baby doll. Did you figure it out?"

Ah, yes, the fortune.

> Your friends have all fallen, some here, some there;

> 'Til they have risen, you've no friends to spare.

"You know that is what's on my mind," I said. "But here’s the thing—I don’t think it’s a prophecy. I don’t think it’s a fortune, and I don’t think it’s a warning."

"It sounds like a warning," she said.

"It does, doesn't it?"

"If it’s not all that, what is it?" she asked.

"I think it’s a riddle, like an old-fashioned riddle where you’re talking about one thing but look like you’re talking about another," I said. "My grandpa used to like them. Unfortunately, they’re not really in vogue—not for a long time. I think it’s because they’re too up for interpretation. You know, like, What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?"

She looked at me blankly.

"I don’t know," Kimberly said. "What is it?"

"A human who crawls and then walks and then uses a cane as they age. That’s the Riddle of the Sphinx, but I don’t think this riddle is as universal as all that. I think this riddle is about our specific experiences, and it’s also a lot more mundane."

She smiled, ready for me to spill the beans.

"All right, what do you think it is?"

I repeated the fortune, word for word.

> “Your friends have all fallen, some here, some there;

> 'Til they have risen, you've no friends to spare.”

I twisted in my seat to look at her straight on.

"If I'm wrong, don’t make fun of me, all right? I think the riddle is referring to rolling a strike in bowling. That was my first thought. The friends are bowling pins—they've all fallen because you rolled a strike, and then, 'til the machine sets them back up, you can't roll a spare because you have no friends—no bowling pins."

"Bowling?" she asked. "I don’t know…does that mean the omen’s at the bowling alley?"

"Maybe," I said. "But then I looked at it again, this time without the metaphor, and I realized that it’s about the bowlers themselves—you know, our Bowlers, Grace and Reggie, and the others. They all fell in different places, one or two at a time, and now we have none of them left to spare. The bowling plus the 'friends'—that’s what I’m thinking about. I think we’re supposed to seek out something about the Bowlers."

Grace, her brother Reggie, her ex Jessie, their friends Bella and Dirk.

Kimberly looked excited. I figured there was something so simple about my interpretation that she really wanted it to be true; otherwise, reading that riddle at face value was pretty depressing.

She turned to the others and said, "You all, come over here."

Her urgency was very convincing to them because soon enough, I was surrounded by everyone, drinks in hand, wanting to know what Kimberly had called them over for.

"I think Riley figured it out," she said. "The fortune from Madam Celia." She turned to me and said, "You’re confident you’re right, right?"

"I don’t know. I’d like to think I am."

"Go on, tell us," Andrew said, barely able to contain himself.

So I explained to them what I had explained to Kimberly, and while I had thought it was a silly little idea, they seemed to think it was a lot more serious than that.

"That is a simple and far more practical interpretation than I was thinking," Andrew said.

They seemed genuinely excited. Even though I thought it was just a whack at getting the correct interpretation, they seemed to trust that I must be right for some reason. And as much as I wanted to dampen their expectations, they were talking excitedly, and Kimberly was going over her memory of how to disarm omens at the bowling alley.

They were joyful because I had given them a really straightforward heading; it was such a simple interpretation and it was so Carousel.

Antoine turned to me in the middle of their revelry and asked, "So, next up, the bowling alley?"

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"Nope," I said.

And all at once, they stopped talking and just stared at me.

"And why not?" I think it was Cassie who asked.

"The crybaby," I said.

"How does that work in?" Michael asked.

"Yeah, what about it?" Antoine asked.

"The baby doll is only useful against dangers that we are not aware of. The bowling alley has lots of omens, but we have three people here who are perfectly capable of scouting them out. Why would we be sent to pick up the baby doll if we just had to go to the bowling alley?"

That wasn't to say the bowling alley was safe. It wasn't, but the danger came from Omens.

"So what then?" Kimberly asked.

"There’s a place in Carousel that’s dangerous, but no one knows why. Don’t you remember?" I asked. "People will get postered there, but there are no omens."

After a moment, Antoine said, "Carousel Family Video."

The first time we’d ever held a version of the Atlas—a very redacted version—we had learned that Carousel Family Video, a once-important hotspot for players that allowed them to rent movies they had played in and rewatch them for whatever benefits that might entail, was actually dangerous for reasons that no one knew.

At least one person had gotten postered there, and no omen could be found, so being extraordinarily cautious, the vets had stopped going there, and by the time we showed up, the new vets barely remembered it.

"Okay, but other than the baby doll, why would we go to Carousel Family Video?" Antoine asked. “That’s a bit of a leap.”

"It was actually Isaac's comment that made me realize something: He talked about going to the mall to see if they had a werewolf costume in the costume shop that we were all being told to go to when we went to those outlet stores," I said.

"Wait, we don’t have to go to the mall, do we?" Isaac asked. "I was just joking around."

"No," I said. "It occurred to me that they would have to have multiple werewolf suits because werewolves always look different in horror movies. I mean, every makeup artist or costume designer wants to put their flair on what werewolves look like, and you can practically guess the movie just by looking at its werewolves."

I paused for them to catch up to where I was headed.

"None of you saw the name of the movie that the werewolves who killed Logan and Avery were from, but you did see the werewolves. You remember what they looked like, don’t you?"

Andrew, Lila, and Michael looked at one another.

"I’ll never forget it," Michael said.

"Describe them," I said.

Andrew, Michael, and Lila exchanged glances once more, and then Michael said, "Big, hairy, sharp teeth…they were werewolves."

I rolled my eyes. "Were they bipedal? Were they completely covered in fur? Were they human-shaped and covered in fur, or did they take on a completely wolf-like anatomy? Did they keep their clothes on when they transformed? Did their eyes glow? Did they have a snout, or did their normal mouth just grow sharp teeth? Did it look like they were wearing a monkey suit, or did it look like they had a bunch of fur glued to their skin? Did they perhaps look like they were wearing special contacts to change the shape of their eyes? Could you see their natural hair color after they had transformed? Did they have claws or paws, or still human hands with long nails? Could you tell what the human looked like before the transformation just by looking at the fully transformed wolf? Did they look like demons or animals, or possibly just humans with a bunch of rubber on their faces? Did they get bigger? Did their arms get longer? Did it look like they were wearing masks? Did they have lots of drool? Did their tongues hang out?"

I took a breath. "I can keep going. There are a million different ways that werewolves differ from movie to movie, and I need you to remember the details."

Something about my long rant seemed to cause a software malfunction in their brains as they tried to remember exactly what the wolves looked like.

I pointed to the man painting caricatures in the corner. “And I'm asking you all this because, while that clown is not out killing children, he just happens to be a sketch artist, and they placed him here at the Speakeasy where Tar told us to go.”

They all turned and looked, realization dawning on them all at once.

“So we identify what the werewolves look like, and then we go look at the covers of the movies at the movie rental store to find the right werewolf,” Antoine said.

“You got it,” I said. “Werewolves are almost always featured on movie covers because the first thing a werewolf fan wants to see is whether the werewolves look stupid. And once we get the title of the storyline, we go look around the bowling alley to find the omen. I already looked in the Atlas for stuff about the bowling alley—there’s barely anything. Grace and the Bowlers were the ones that wrote out most of the pathing around that area, but of course, we don’t have access to what they wrote because we have an older version of the Atlas from before they would have written it.”

For some reason, I didn’t expect my thoughts to be well received. I thought there would be arguments, but they all seemed genuinely happy to hear what I had to say and how all the elements lined up. If I wasn’t wrong, I thought Kimberly looked proud.

So that's how the eleven of us sat around a caricature artist who just happened to be a killer clown when the circus was in, as Michael, Andrew, and Lila tried to describe the monsters they had seen kill their friends.

“His arms were long so that he could run on all fours without bending over too much,” Andrew said. “I distinctly remember it—this one large, muscular fellow, his arms just seemed to keep lengthening every time I looked at him.”

“I often wish my arms were long enough to run on all fours,” Isaac said. He had more than his fair share of the booze.

That got a chuckle as the clown and I teamed up to ask more details and questions.

“What about their faces?” I asked. “Were they wolf-like or Wolverine with sharp teeth?”

“Definitely like the head of a wolf sewn onto a human body,” Lila said. “Except, at first, they did just look like humans with sharp teeth. But then I turned my head back, and suddenly they were wolves.”

“The same thing happened to me,” Michael said. “I never actually saw them transform—it’s just that every time I looked back, they were a little bit more wolf-like.”

“Andrew,” I asked, “is that what you saw too?”

He nodded.

“I had thought it was just my imagination, or maybe I was just panicking, but it's true—I never saw them actually transform.”

“That’s a common horror movie trope,” I said. “Saves on the budget. Better to miss out on the transformation than to ruin it with CGI. Or maybe they could only afford one proper transformation.”

Humans turning into monsters was an art form in horror movies, and one of the cheapest and most reliable tricks was to have the camera look away during the transformation. Carousel, it seemed, had turned that into an enemy trope. I would have to think about why that would be important or how it would play into the game.

As we talked, a picture started to transform and appear on the easel of an unclothed, long-armed, short-clawed, wolf-headed monster with distinct muscular bodies and obvious sexual dimorphism between the males and the females. Apparently, the lady werewolves kept to their curves—an observation that set the creepy clown caricature artist into a laughing frenzy.

“I, for one, think Carousel made a good call by getting rid of their clothes,” Isaac said. “They always look goofy with clothes on.”

By the time we were finished, we had a really good sketch of the monsters we were after, all without risking a trip further into the lair.

Now, all that was left was for us to travel to Carousel Family Video and hope that a spooky, crying baby doll could save us from whatever was dangerous about a movie rental store.

I just hoped that my theories were right, that the clues we had been given were personalized to us, and that I hadn’t gotten carried away.

There was no way I was getting sleep that night without the help of my Out Like a Light trope.