Arc II, Chapter 74: Gray

Roderick was now officially a threat. I didn’t like that wrinkle. Most of our plans assumed that future mayor Gray would be a pushover.

I rushed in through the wall. Being able to phase through solid objects was quite handy. I was getting used to it.

On the other side of the wall, I looked to where I knew Gray was supposed to be, and… he wasn’t there. He had seemingly vanished into thin air. I looked all through the crowd and I couldn’t see him.

There must have been a trope at play. Players often develop an instinct for such things. Players who couldn’t see enemy tropes were probably better at it than I was.

Antoine and Cassie were out of the secret passage according to my Deathwatch trope. I had to go find them.

They weren’t that difficult to locate. Cassie’s character’s closet must not have held one normal-looking dress because she was dressed like a bruise. Purple, black, and a hint of sickly green. She didn’t look happy to be wearing it.

Antoine was wearing a tux, but not a good one.

“It’s time to fight,” I said using Flashback Revelation.

Antoine immediately perked up.

“The Die Cast?” he asked quickly. He looked from side to side until he found where I was when my poster appeared on the red wallpaper.

Which direction were yes and no again?

I moved. He followed me with his eyes. Cassie was watching too.

“No?” Cassie asked.

“Gray,” Antoine said knowingly.

I moved in the other direction to say yes.

“Lead us to him,” Antoine said.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t do that. I had lost him.

I moved again to say no.

“Why not?” Cassie asked. “Oh, right. We need to look for him?”

Yes, I said. They must have looked like fools watching me walk from side to side like that. Luckily, we were all Off-Screen.

“We’ll get Kimberly and Bobby,” Antoine said. “You find Gray so you can show us the way.”

Sounded like a plan.

I ran past Antoine and Cassie, through the hallway where the hidden entrance to the secret passage was, and into the kitchens where Isaac walked aimlessly.

What was he doing? He had a job.

And then I saw it.

Someone or something stood directly behind Isaac. It was so close that I could barely see the outline of his silhouette.

Not now. Please not now.

Isaac started laughing.

“It’s been a while,” he said. But it wasn’t just Isaac’s voice. I heard another person talking, someone with an electric, sarcastic crackle.

“Strander Blake,” I said mostly out of shock at the sudden realization. I had tried my best not to think about him ever since he fouled up the Ten Second Game at the beginning of the Tutorial.

“I was just in the neighborhood,” Strander made Isaac say. “I read ahead on that little script in my head. There will be some wonderful additions to my collection in this story.”

I was suddenly very aware of how vulnerable I was at that moment. Strander collected spirits. The last time we met, I was flesh and blood. This time, I was a ghost. From what I had seen, he could simply sew me into his menagerie without a second thought.

There was no way Carousel would let that cretin get in our way. I looked closely. There was a good sign. Isaac’s spirit was not sewn to the writhing mass that was Strander Blake. He was held there by threads, but his ghostly form had not been grafted onto the spectral Frankenstein as far as I could tell.

“Let him go,” I said. “We have things to do. I don’t have time for this.”

Even as a ghost, I could feel the fear rising up inside me. If he attacked me, I would be relying on Carousel and its all-powerful script to save myself and Isaac.

Fortunately, there was no need.

With a sickening sound like the rending of flesh, the little black threads that wound over Isaac retracted.

He fell forward, but I still didn’t get a good view of what Strander actually looked like because another ghost replaced Isaac in an instant. It was the same drowned woman that Strander had been so fond of before.

“Just having fun,” she said with Strander’s actual voice in the back. “I’m supposed to be here. My abilities are useful. It would seem the Spirit of Vengeance, as it’s called here, is a pain to Carousel. I’m only here to help out.”

“Great,” I said. “So now you’re friends with Carousel. That makes sense, you two have so much in common.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“You’re one to talk,” Strander said, water dripping to the floor from his puppet’s face. I could feel I had hit a sensitive spot.

There were NPCs in the room. It was a kitchen during a party after all. If they could see the dripping ghost, they didn’t show it. She was a different kind of ghost from me or Isaac. In the last story, she was visible. Her tropes had not changed. I wasn’t sure how that all worked.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Strander got closer to me. My dead heart beat faster than it had ever done before.

“Carousel sent me to control the Spirit of Vengeance a little while ago. To make it mind its manners. Apparently, it doesn’t like doing anything unless it gets to kill someone at the end of it, a sentiment I can understand. That didn’t work for Carousel, so it had me take the big bad over and take it on a walk. A walk, to watch you shave. I thought it odd.”

He started to laugh.

“Seemed like a joke between friends to me,” he said.

Carousel had deviated from the true script just to mess with me back before First Blood. Having an errand boy who could control powerful spirits must have allowed Carousel to cut through some of the magical bureaucracy.

“Personally,” he said. “I was hoping you would accidentally fall on your razor so I could say hello. I was almost disappointed when you didn’t fall for it. I see you managed to die all the same though.”

The whole time we talked, Roderick Gray never showed up on the screen on the red wallpaper. That meant he hadn’t been On-Screen.

“We have work to do,” I said. “If all you wanted to do was say hello, then, we’ll be leaving.”

“Just as well,” he said. “I was going to tell you where that wretched man was, but I suppose you don’t need my help.”

I paused. “Roderick Gray? You know where he is?”

It was a big mansion. I needed all the help I could get.

“You should know too,” he said. He laughed maniacally. “After all, you know he is supposed to survive.”

That was actually a useful hint.

Roderick Gray lived past the manor blaze. Now that we knew he was in the building, then we could conclude that he was somewhere in the house that wasn’t destroyed, a place where he would be safe from the fire.