Book Eight, Chapter 14: The In-Between

On the red wallpaper, my status was Captured. It was probably true about all of us, but Carousel didn’t clue us in until we had actually seen why.

I ran as fast as I could, with the elk-like creature on my tail for quite a few minutes. If it was trying to catch and kill me, it could have, but it seemed much more interested in intimidating me, making its blood-curdling cry, and smashing its antlers against any object it saw.

When I finally felt like I was getting some distance on it, my radio crackled to life.

“Riley, slow down. You’re running blind,” Marcus said in a calm voice.

“Well, I gotta run somehow,” I said. “That thing is behind me. Where are you?”

“Still here, partner,” he said.

I continued moving forward, and as I did, I realized that the rooms I was entering were bigger and bigger. They were poorly furnished, less finished.

I finally found a place to catch my breath once the sound of the Wapasha faded into the distance. I had been On-Screen some of the time, as Carousel cut between all of us.

“Marcus, I’m getting some funny ideas about what’s going on here,” I said. “Either you’re not really dead, or I am, right? How else am I hearing you right now?”

“You’re not dead,” Marcus said after a beat. “I’m—”

I looked around the room for a bit, waiting for him to continue. We had gone Off-Screen. Something must have been happening somewhere else because it sounded like he was in the middle of saying something.

I looked back the way I had come, and the path was completely different from the way it had been. Somehow, I never heard the wood move.

A moment later, I was back On-Screen, and Marcus continued just where he left off. “I’m someplace better, but you’re not supposed to be here.”

I tried to give the right performance. If anyone knew what it felt like to end up in some version of the afterlife a little early, it should be a player at the game at Carousel. And yet, it was still hard to play it right. As far as existential questions went, it was hard to surprise me at that point. How should I have been acting? Scared? Reverent?

“Where the hell am I?” I asked finally.

“A crossing place,” Marcus said. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard you were coming. This is a fine place to walk, this forest, but it’s not a good place to stay. We have to get you out of here.”

I looked from left to right at the paths the house had left for me.

“This way,” Marcus said, but this time he wasn’t speaking into my radio. I just heard his voice down one of the hallways nearby, and I followed.

As I walked, I would occasionally hear snippets of attempted communication on my walkie-talkie, Molly’s voice, Nicole’s, Camden’s, all distorted, all a million miles away, talking about the stairs, talking about the room changing, occasionally even saying my name, but I couldn’t quite make out what they wanted.

I went Off-Screen for a time and then back On-Screen. It was only then that I realized that Second Blood had passed.

This was certainly an oddball story. Nothing was really trying to kill me aside from the elk, which had been content just to scare me. Time was passing by, and soon the finale would end, and if we didn’t escape, that would be it.

What a bummer.

My fans in the Manifest Consortium would be so disappointed if I got defeated by a story like this one.

Of course, we wouldn’t let that happen. If it came down to it, we could always burn our way out. We didn’t have to succeed on the first try, but we would still do our best.

The static and voices on my radio continued for a while until I was finally On-Screen, and Marcus acknowledged me again.

I could see flashes of him as a person, just a regular dude, but when my eyes looked in that direction and focused, all I would see was a figure faded into the wood, with eyes and a mouth made of nothing but patterns in the grain, a figment of my imagination, almost.

“Ignore the voices,” Marcus said. “Everyone is safe. They’re just scared. No one knows what to expect until they get here. I sure didn’t.”

Ah. We were having a character moment.

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“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “I should have done something. I should have called in a robbery somewhere in the distance to get all the black-and-whites out of the area. I’ve been thinking about it, and that’s what I should have done.”

There was a pause as Marcus seemed to consider what I said.

“Nah, that’s a load of crap,” he said. “It was my own damn fault. You told me to leave, and I got greedy. This place gives you peace about those kinds of things, well, mostly.”

Somehow, the fake relationship that I had with this character I had barely met was still striking a chord for me. I was familiar with the emotional toll of not being able to get the people you love out of danger in time.

Of course, the fact that we were straight-up criminals in this storyline tamped down the emotional connection a bit.

“Did you see what we came here for?” I asked, laughing. “Red Jack Bellanti’s secret treasure?”

“No, I didn’t see that,” Marcus said. “But I might have seen Bellanti. I just didn’t realize it was him. He’s not having a happy time right now. The folks waiting here for him have been waiting a while, haven’t they? And they are happy to chase him through the forest. Poor guy. You need to turn to the right up here. One of your people is up ahead. Is that Dina Cano I see up there, and little Sean? Right this way.”

It was hard to describe, but I felt like Marcus was right there with me, right there in the woods, walking through it as if it were a forest trail. I could even catch glimpses where the wood panels on the walls turned to trees, and he walked behind them, wearing a red shirt that billowed in the wind, and I could never get a good look at him.

As I followed him, I walked into a room where a person was holding a flashlight at an angle, and as I shone my light at them, I realized it was, indeed, Dina, hugging her son Sean. He was just as I recognized him from the Post Traumatic storyline, well, a bit younger, probably around the age he was when he actually died.

“There,” Marcus said. “Do you see her?”

“I see her,” I said. “Dina,” I asked. It was like she didn’t even notice I had been there. She was so happy to see her son again, as if the pain was fresh.

She looked up at me and said, “He found me. He found me, Riley.”

Unlike Marcus, Sean wasn’t hidden behind trees. Dina’s tropes gave her extra privileges.

“He’s a restless little fellow,” Marcus said. “Always trying to get back to the other side.”