Book Eight, Chapter 55: Over the River and Through the Woods

We didn’t travel very far that day after we found the body. We followed the arrow on our arm-mounted devices as fast as we could, but the sun moved faster in the sky than it should have. Before we knew it, it was time to set up camp again.

The world around us had gotten wet again. We were in some sort of swamp or bog, but the old roads that had been built hundreds of years earlier were still there, and mosquitoes couldn’t make it through our suits, so it didn’t bother me much, though it was quite hot.

I was tired after hours of walking, and I found it easy to slip back into sleep, hoping to escape the danger for a little while. But unfortunately, my Call Sheet trope told me we would be back On-Screen within a few hours.

I didn’t know what it meant. I assumed it meant we would be woken up in an emergency. After all, we had zoomed through the Rebirth phase with the discovery that we were not the first group to be sent on this particular mission, and while we weren’t quite at Second Blood yet, we would be soon.

When Call Sheet said I would be going On-Screen in three hours, it didn’t mean my body.

I had to sleep if I was going to think clearly. It would be nice to get my mind off things. But that didn’t quite work, because when I slept, I dreamed.

And when I dreamed, I dreamed of the body. The same one we had just found on the side of the road. We had examined it, but it had happened Off-Screen. It wasn’t clear why Carousel didn’t want the footage, but it turned out that it did. It just wasn’t using its cameras.

It was using mine, the one mounted on my shoulder, and it wasn’t going to present that footage straight up. It was going to use it in a dream sequence.

“His tent is still on his back,” Cassie noted. “That means that he didn’t follow the voice that we heard on the audio log.”

Everything I was seeing, I was seeing from the perspective of my camera, so it was like I wasn’t even there.

“That makes sense,” Antoine said. “If he had followed the voice, why would his body be on the side of the road? It would be wherever Camden is.”

This man, Cole Maddox, had run from the voice, but whether it was hunger or thirst or just pure exhaustion, he had not made it home.

And then, at once, I was no longer viewing the footage from my shoulder-mounted camera, at least not footage I had taken already. I was watching footage of myself walking through a distant village. It was a classic post-apocalyptic village with markets and rusted cars, but there were no people, and there hadn’t been in a long time.

“You were meant to see their story,” a voice told me, kind and maternal. “You were meant to tell the world what happened to them.”

While I knew that the voice talking to me was the enemy, I really wanted to believe those words, and not just about this storyline. I wanted it to just be true. I wanted to see the end of the world, the end of Carousel, just to watch it. I wanted to follow my curiosity all the way until the last thread unraveled.

“You were meant to document it,” the voice continued.

I probably should have been interested in the voice, but I wasn’t. I liked its promise, but I knew it was false. It was feeding my ego.

I walked through the streets of the abandoned village, trying to learn whatever the dream was supposed to tell me. It didn’t seem clear. I wasn’t being led anywhere. It was as if the opportunity to film things was supposed to be enough.

I continued walking, looking for any signs of life or narrative, and I found none. Not in the village, at least. It wasn’t until I wandered out a rusted gate and saw a tree upon a hill that a strong feeling of fear overcame me.

And then I was gone again.

This time, I wasn’t anywhere, but I was looking at something. I floated in a black, inky nothing, and all that was in front of me was a wadded-up piece of paper. I unfolded it, maybe with my mind, because my hands certainly didn’t do it, and what I saw inside were a few scribbled words.

“She’s afraid of the maps.”

There was more written on it, but for some reason, I couldn’t force my eyes to look at it. Was it because I didn’t have high enough Savvy, or was it simply too much too soon? The paper was old. It looked handmade. I could see the individual fibers that made it up.

“She’s afraid of the maps.”

The words flashed again in my mind, and I recognized the handwriting. It was Camden’s.

Suddenly, images replaced the words, and what I saw was one large piece of paper being split in two. One side was crumpled up and thrown, but I couldn’t see where. The other was folded and squeezed between two pieces of stone tiling.

“She’s afraid of the maps.”

The words appeared in my mind again. After that, the inky black darkness consumed me, and all I could hear was a woman’s laughter. Not just a laugh, no, a cackle.

And then there was nothing, and I faded into a deep, restful sleep until morning.

–

When morning came, we were back on the trail as soon as we had light to see by.

“Did anyone else have a weird dream last night?” I asked as soon as we were On-Screen.

“I did,” Cassie said. “A whole village of people. They were living outside, not even in a dome. Can you believe that? Living right out under the sun and stars, just like everybody used to. But they’re afraid, and they need us.”

As we marched uphill, following the arrows on our ArGIS devices, I made a face of dissatisfaction.

“I had a similar dream,” I said, “except the town was empty. Everyone was gone or dead.”

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“Well, you’ve always been very antisocial,” Cassie said. “Even in your dreams, apparently.”

“Did anyone else have a strange dream?” I asked.

Anna and Antoine had not.

“Why are you asking?” Anna asked after they had both denied having dreams.

“There was a wadded-up piece of paper in mine,” I said. “Did you see that too?” I asked Cassie.

We had already established that our characters were having dreams about this place we were supposed to go to. I figured it was high time we stopped dancing around the issue and treated it as real.

“Something about maps,” Cassie said.

“She’s afraid of maps,” I said. “That’s what the paper said in my dream.”

Antoine chuckled. “That’s a strange thing to be afraid of,” he said. “Who is she?”

I looked over at Anna. A kindly older woman had been haunting Anna’s daydreams, encouraging her to travel into the wilds.

“I think we’re dealing with some sort of creature that looks like an older woman. Do you know anything about that from your books?” I asked Cassie.

It wasn’t clear if my character would know what a witch or a fairy was, or at least he wouldn’t know much about them. Cassie’s character, however, would.

“Yeah, I know a little bit about that,” Cassie said. “There’s a story about a woman who lures children to a house made of candy so she can cook them and eat them.”

“So you’re saying there’ll be candy?” Antoine asked. “What are we waiting for? Let’s pick up the pace.”