Book Eight, Chapter 33: Into the River

The river was moving fast, even when we stuck our oars in the water to try to slow ourselves down in hopes of being able to drag our teammates out of the water.

But as we went around the bend, passing through dark tunnels illuminated mostly by a single torch Camden carried, we realized quickly that they weren’t going to catch up with us. Still, we did our best to slow our passage. We steered next to the wall to our left, hoping to do what Camden had done before: find some crack or crevice to stick the end of our oars in.

But it was useless. These stone walls were covered with slime and algae, and every time we tried to slow down, we would destabilize ourselves and risk going sideways due to the torrent.

Even by the firelight, we couldn’t see exactly where we were going. As we took twists and turns, the river split off underground at least twice. All the while, I shone my flashlight behind us every chance I got, looking for any sign of Ramona, Bobby, Kelsey, or Isaac. I didn’t see them.

“We have to pull off at the first opportunity,” I said. “Wait for them to catch up.”

“Where exactly are we supposed to do that?” Antoine asked as he did his best to prevent the boat from crashing against a rock wall.

“Hold on!” Camden screamed from the front. “We’re about to go down rapids!”

I did my best to wrap my legs up under the bench I was sitting on while doing everything I could to keep the boat from turning sideways as we crashed haphazardly from side to side of the river.

Then there was the first fall. Not too big, maybe just a foot down, but that was a lot in a boat like this. I had been river rafting before in one of those big rubber rafts. They were much more forgiving of the turbulence.

Another drop, about the same size.

I kept turning around, trying to shine my light to see if the others were swimming behind us, if by some miracle they had taken the same path through the dark tunnels as we did. I saw nothing but white water. I needed to devote my full attention just to keeping us from bashing ourselves to bits.

Then there was a third drop, and while I couldn’t be sure, it felt like we came down five feet before we finally slammed against the river again. I nearly lost my oar, I was so jarred.

Forward we went. The river didn’t care if our boat was moving in the right orientation or not; it would carry us all the same.

And then the montage began.

Not the type of montage that we would see in storylines, because there was no On-Screen or Off-Screen. It was more like a dark ride through the underbelly of Carousel.

At once, we entered a passageway that was clearly part of the sewer system. The river slowed, and we saw rats nibbling on the bones of some unfortunate man wearing a frat T-shirt. Then we were out of the sewers and back in a cave system of some kind, where we saw a sea witch boiling a brew in a cauldron near the river.

She didn’t pay us much mind, but the young family she had chained up against the far wall noticed us and called out for help.

Next, we sailed through an entrance to a cave that we first thought was like the others before it. But we soon realized we were floating through the skeleton of a large snake. I didn’t know where we had entered it, but we exited through its mouth. Its giant fangs were so large that if we had run into them, the boat would have shattered.

We continued sailing, and the farther we went, the more we saw. There was a collection of goblins, with one head goblin yelling at all the others. The river was partially diverted off there to help power a large wooden wheel that was used to operate rough goblin machinery, like something out of a fantasy novel.

I didn’t know what the lead goblin was ranting about, but it struck me like he was trying to get the others to unionize. I didn’t notice until we were already out of their cavern that they wore human bones on their belts, which was scary, yeah, but also kind of tacky.

More caves. More monsters. Spiders, skeletons, and mole people all just went about their lives, ignoring us as we passed by them on the river.

It made no sense to my eyes, but then I realized my eyes were limited. I couldn’t see the complexity or the scale of the Carousel River, but I understood what was happening to some extent. The river—like Carousel itself—had a role to play in so many stories. And when you were outside of it, it just looked like a river. But when you were inside of it, you saw it all at once, continuous from one story to the next until eventually…

We crashed out of a drainage pipe into a large body of water that looked much more like the river we had seen before.

We were outside, with fresh air and sunshine, and the river slowed greatly as we tried our best to steer along its shores.

Cassie never knew any of this. She was sleeping soundly in the bottom of the boat with no dreams, no thoughts, no fear.

Andrew did his best to make sure she was comfortable, placing his bag underneath her head as a pillow.

And just as I thought our trip was about to get normal, the lazy river that we were sailing down stopped being a river at all. The dark, murky waters abruptly halted, like how rivers do when they meet the ocean, but instead of meeting the ocean… they met swimming pools.

Hundreds and hundreds of them, all linked together as if they were built that way. But I was sure that they weren’t. And for each swimming pool we passed, there was a house or building near it. These were backyard pools, city pools, waterparks, all kinds, shapes, and functions. From the perspective of the river, it was like they were all next to each other.

I wondered if we were to pull our boat up to one of the pool’s sides and get out, would we see the river the way we did now, one thousand linked swimming pools flowing in one direction, or would we see it like a normal swimming pool? And if we did that, would we be able to get back to the river just by reentering the pool?

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

I had no idea, but I didn’t have long to think about it.

Because I heard a scream in the distance, in one of the houses up ahead, a young woman was getting chased around by a mask-wearing, knife-wielding serial killer.

But as we got close, suddenly that all disappeared too. The house was still there, but in place of the victim and killer, there was nothing but a window on the back of the house that was left open.

It was an Omen for a storyline called Lights On, Nobody Home, and even as I watched the Omen, I could see it being written and built in real time. The poster was switching around like Carousel was choosing between different options.

The more interesting part was that I could see the Omen so easily, despite not having a scouting trope equipped. But then, when all the details about the Omen got settled, suddenly it disappeared, and it became like all other Omens to the naked eye.

But that wasn’t the only time this happened. All around us were monsters and victims disappearing and turning into Omens in real time.

“What is going on?” Antoine asked. “What neighborhood is this?”

“I don’t think it has a name,” I said. “Not yet.”

The river ran through everything, including the untamed corners of the world. It ran through dungeons and caves and forests and swimming pools.

And then, after we had moved through a few miles of open pool, we moved out of them just as quickly.

A large swath of land around us became flooded with around six inches of water. Fields and fields of nothing but water and rice rushed to meet us. The river cut through it all, not mixing and barely disturbing the water it moved through.

Still, we had to do our best to stay on the river and not let the boat flow off onto the flooded land around us.

It was a rice paddy, and from the looks of the people working that rice paddy, we were somewhere in ancient China, or some version of it.

Suddenly, a large humanoid, dressed in traditional clothing but with a wolflike head, emerged from the woods.