Arc II, Chapter 27: Early Morning Poker

Back to the resort we went. We were all anxious about finding the spirits of the dead there, but it was clear that we were meant to return to Jed Geist’s old home, now the largest, fanciest hotel suite I had ever been in.

Since we had triggered the time capsule scene earlier this time, there was no need to enlist a Paragon to guide us to our hotel room. It was still light enough outside. The scene with the front desk clerk at the resort played out similarly but without Bobby’s involvement.

It turned out that Bobby’s Recast trope had some staying power because she asked him why he was at work that day. Apparently, his character had weekends off.

The Stranger didn’t approach us. The mirrors weren’t covered in the suite. Everything looked normal. I could smell fresh paint from the repairs that had been done. It was strange for a reality-altering entity like Carousel to use NPCs for something like fixing windows and sheetrock, but it apparently did. To be fair, there were plenty of building materials on the premises due to the ongoing construction in the rest of the resort.

None of the others found this as interesting as I did.

They were just relieved to not be running a storyline that night.

“But we have to be doing something,” I protested.

The rain and clogged sewers were as close to a ticking clock as we could get. We had two days. Whether we were supposed to prevent some sort of flood or prepare for it, I didn’t know, but taking the night off felt unwise.

“We need a break,” Kimberly said. She was referring to Antoine, which was funny because Antoine was more than willing to find whatever challenge was next on our list.

No one wanted to sleep in the actual rooms. The Ten Second Game was safe enough, but still, it would be hard to sleep while it was going on.

We pulled the mattresses into the living room and spread out the furniture. All of the bedroom doors were closed tight.

Still, tension remained, especially among the newbies.

“You think this is rattling,” Antoine said. “Back at Camp Dyer, there was this clearly haunted cabin out by the lake. It was covered in police tape and the windows were shuttered. The little kids at the camp would act all sweet and ask to play tetherball or whatever, but eventually they always tried to get you to go in the cabin. Creepy little kids.”

They talked about Camp Dyer like it was full of fond memories. They told stories about the Vets, both funny and scary. We never would have spoken so highly of it when we were there.

Dina and I were the only ones not going along. We were hunting for clues. We knew we had been sent to this particular suite for a reason. This building had been the property of a member of the Geist family. That was a little too much of a coincidence to let pass. We didn’t know how this suite played into things, but we knew that some of Jed Geist’s junk was still being used to decorate the place after it got purchased by the resort.

Within the storyline we had just played, Sidney’s character had been trying to communicate with Jed Geist’s ghost. That was a blinking neon sign telling us that we should attempt that too.

She had the obvious advantage. Her Outsider’s Perspective trope was perfect for finding something out of place, but in the end, it wasn’t something out of place that we needed.

We were in the storage room where we had found The Stranger lurking during the storyline. The room was filled with furniture and boxes, most of which were labeled, “To Geist Museum,” as if there was some intention of getting these items into the hands of some Carousel historian at some point in the future.

“You ever wonder how real these people were?” Dina asked me as she flipped through a book that must have been Jed Geist’s stamp collection.

I shrugged my shoulders. “The way Constance talked; they might have been once. Back before Carousel was Carousel.”

“You think we’ll ever meet any of them?” she asked. “The Geists.”

“Given Carousel’s obsession with them, there’s no telling.”

I closed up the box I had been rummaging through. It was a mess. The objects were all wrapped and cushioned with crumpled old newspaper. What was the point?

“To talk to him using our Licenses, we need a Keepsake, which as far as we know you get from killing an enemy in a story, or we have to find the murder weapon that did him in. I’m assuming he was killed and didn’t die naturally, because, well—”

“It’s Carousel,” Dina said.

“Yep. But why would the weapon that killed him be in with his belongings?” I asked.

“We need clues,” Dina said, diligently opening another box and digging through the next box. She pulled handfuls of crumpled newspaper out of a box and said with a smirk, “Maybe this is the murder weapon,” as she pulled out an ancient toaster that must have been one of the first ever produced.

I laughed, but before I could respond, there was a knock at the door. Bobby was standing in the doorframe.

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“You guys, I got some food and stuff from the kitchens,” he said, smiling. “All I had to do was wear my uniform and they thought I was still my character!”

“Good call,” Dina said. She set her box down and followed Bobby out to the kitchen to share in the spoils. It really was good to have a Wallflower on the team.

As I walked out of the room after them, it hit me. Where would you find information about the death of a man from a famous family?

The clues we needed were in the boxes after all, but not in Jed’s belongings. They were used to wrap and protect his belongings.

I grabbed some of the newspaper inserts that Dina had left lying on the ground.

There was a little sticker on an old front-page section with this address and the name, “Geist, Jedediah” on it. That meant that whoever had packed up all his stuff after his death had used his own newspapers as packing material. He must have had a newspaper subscription that kept running after his death, causing them to pile up. If that was true, then an article reporting on his death could be somewhere in all of the mess.

I took the copy of the Carousel Gazette with me into the living room to show my discovery to the others.

When I got there, I realized very quickly that food wasn’t the only thing Bobby had taken from the resort. Everyone was gathered around the coffee table where Reply the Departed had once been set up. The table was covered in mini bottles of alcohol now.

Looking around, they had clearly been into them already. Back at Camp Dyer, that had been a common salve to Carousel’s various afflictions as well.

Everyone had a plate full of chicken wings and a red plastic cup filled with off-brand soda and spirits.

And they looked happy to be doing something other than trying to survive.

Isaac must have been a bit of a partyer back in the real world because he had already built up a collection of half a dozen empty bottles in front of him. Antoine wasn’t far behind.

So that was going to be what kind of night we were having.

Luckily the others hadn’t partaken as wholeheartedly.