Arc II, Chapter 59: Fire

Antoine, Isaac, and I jumped into my car. We watched the screens that had appeared in our minds. We were Off-Screen.

Future Mayor Gray and the coked-out Ricky Zaragoza got back into the brown car and silently watched the factory.

“What is happening?” Isaac said, clearly not ready to be watching film footage in his mind’s eye.

What was happening? We were seeing the killer, I assumed, making his way through the twilight toward the factory. We were seeing things through his eyes.

“When Carlyle and I were going over the script for the movie we’re making, I suggested we show a scene from the killer’s point of view. Carousel must have thought it would be funny to do that for us in this storyline,” I said.

“I don’t like this,” Isaac said. His shield wall of sarcasm and jokery was not equipped to help him deal with the video feed playing in his head. “I can hear it breathing.”

“Yeah,” I said. Imagine that. Hearing a killer’s breath in your ear. Luckily, this was not the same thing as what I was used to. This was audio playing on the red wallpaper, which sounded like an echo, almost like a radio playing in the next room. The axe murderer sounded like he was right behind you. “Which is weird since it did just crawl out of a grave.”

“So it’s not a zombie if it’s breathing,” Antoine said.

“Not the normal kind, at least,” I said. I tried to project an air of confidence, as if that might soothe Isaac.

The truth was it was incredibly scary sitting there in the car waiting for the killer to walk toward its victim.

“He’s on the other side of the factory,” Antoine said. “He’s walking into the sunset.”

That was a nice observation. The downside was we wouldn’t get to see the baddie in action.

“We’re safe for now,” I said. “We’re not anywhere near First Blood.”

In fact, the needle had barely ventured into the Party Phase. This was shaping up to be a long story.

We waited and watched as the killer walked along toward the factory.

“You know, it’s kind of funny,” I said. “He hasn’t walked past a single civilian. That’s how it is in the movies. No one sees the hulking monster making its way across town.”

It reminded me of one of the enemy tropes I had seen before on Ranger Danger.

“Are we supposed to just sit here?” Isaac asked.

Antoine and I looked at each other. I’d let him answer.

“Our characters want the Geists dead. Sitting here and watching it is what our characters would do. You have to be in character, or else Carousel gets mad,” he said.

Isaac had not yet had a taste of playing an actual character with preset motivations and desires. Antoine and I had only had a taste of it.

“Our characters suck,” Isaac said. “I think mine is supposed to be stupid. Everyone in his family talked to me like I was an idiot earlier today. Apparently, I crashed my car in a lake, too. I don’t get how we’re the main characters, either. Aren’t we like the bad guys? We summoned whatever this thing is.”

“Breathe, man,” I said. “We’re alright. Being the main characters does not mean we are good people. Besides, in this story, I get the sense that the killer will eventually turn on us. It’s what we deserve.”

I imagined that didn’t help calm Isaac’s nerves, but he needed to be prepared for that reality. We were the worst kind of horror movie characters: we were complicit.

Frankly, I doubted I was a main character. I got the sense that my character was someone the audience would love to see die. The over-sexualized movie script and the terrible motivation for taking a life all added up to me getting the kibosh.

“There’s the factory,” Antoine said as the video feed on the red wallpaper finally showed the killer approaching the building in front of us. “Should we go take a peek?”

I thought about it. I could use a look for Trope Master. I would love to know exactly what we were dealing with, but there were other concerns.

“Maybe we don’t want our characters to know too much about what they’ve done,” I said. “They can’t see the POV cam of the killer approaching. Do they even know what this thing is supposed to look like? I know it would help my Oblivious Bystander strategy if my character didn’t see the killer just yet.”

Antoine nodded.

“I just hate sitting here watching. I don’t know where Kimberly is,” he said. “She might be in there.”

I shook my head.

“She’s an actress in my character’s movie. I imagine she won’t get center stage until later,” I said. That seemed to soothe his worries.

The killer’s live feed was very strange from that point forward. He approached a loading dock door and climbed up into the building like it was nothing, even though that involved a five-foot vertical. I heard a sharp snap right before the bay door slammed behind him.

He walked forward.

The video changed color. It was the lighting. It was orange and bright all of a sudden.

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“What is happening?” Isaac asked.

I didn’t know.

The camera turned toward a desk with a stack of papers and a lamp. The bulb in the lamp burst, catching one of the papers on fire. The fire spread.

The figure continued walking. I hoped it would come across a window or mirror so we could see its reflection, but it never did.

It walked forward. A drinking fountain hanging on the wall lunged forward as a pipe burst behind it. Water started spraying out from the fountain. The water landed on a machine that was pressing metal disks into shapes. The machine began to spark as the killer walked by.

Carousel was putting on a show for us.

The sparking machine started spraying oil.

I could see people in the distance. They were wearing ear protection while they buffed some metal die-cast parts. They had no idea what was happening.

The killer was not in the same building as the office where Bensen and Carlyle were, but hallways connected the buildings.

Then, for the first time, I got a glimpse of the killer, though it was only just a quick look at his hand as he grabbed a large rod of metal from a scrap heap. It had a rusty, jagged end.

The killer continued through the building. Sparks flew. Oil leaked. A light fixture fell from above and landed just to the left of the killer.

He continued walking miraculously, never crossing paths with a witness until he found himself in the same building as the office.

I didn’t want to watch.

It turned out I would never have to.

In the distance, I heard a siren. Then another.

Pretty soon, the night air was filled with the sound of fire engines.

“That’s some great response time,” Antoine said. I could tell he was rattled. “They got here already and the smoke isn’t even visible in the air.”

Fire trucks started to pour in from every street. Police and ambulances were right after them.

Soon, the fire started to burn in earnest. I could see an orange glow over the building where the killer had entered.

A loud crash sounded. The building was coming apart.

On the red wallpaper, the feed continued. The killer stopped short. It stood in a hallway just in view of the stairs that would lead up to the office.

“Why isn’t he moving?” Isaac asked.

I couldn’t say.