Book Five, Chapter 103: Watch Party

You have to choose your battles in Carousel.

We had chosen Stray Dawn, and we had won handily. Now, we would never have to fight that battle again.

So, “we” decided it was okay to spoil the story to the others.

We all piled into the living room on our new chairs. The girls got the couch—chivalry was undead in Carousel.

We were having a movie night, and we decided to watch Stray Dawn. Not the version we had just played—no, we wanted to watch the VHS we had rented so long ago. We wanted to watch Stray Dawn: The Mark.

It was a movie starring the Bowlers, and while seeing our old friends again brought a certain pain, it also brought joy and nostalgia.

We came to find that this version of the movie, altered by Grace’s Detective AA, was very different from the version we had played.

It was about two sisters, played by Grace and Bella, who moved to a small town called Southeastern Carousel that was run-down and in financial ruin.

This version of Southeastern Carousel was much more like the one in Carousel proper. It had many tourist attractions, but not the expensive kind.

Southeastern Carousel wasn’t a tourist destination—it was a tourist trap, with all kinds of gimmicky places to spend your money, like a mountain you could climb to witness UFOs or an actual “working” wishing fountain. The few streets that comprised downtown Southeastern Carousel were filled with souvenir shops.

A strange cult of overly polite congregants could be found holding signs condemning gambling and begging everyone to repent. Their compound was up on a different mountain, where they had a giant statue of the god they worshipped. I didn’t get a chance to look at it when we were last there, but I did see that admission to the statue cost five dollars.

Everything in Southeastern Carousel seemed to cost five dollars.

You wanted your palm read, your horoscope, or a word from a deceased loved one? They all cost the same.

There was a Museum of Oddities, similar to those Ripley’s Believe It or Not buildings that were built upside-down back in the real world. It was filled with all sorts of illusions and surreal attractions.

The Atlas said not to go in there because literally nothing in that building was an illusion.

The point was, it was a good place to lose money—especially if you kept going southeast and found the casino, whose jingle we knew so well.

It was that sort of place.

Every state—heck, every country—probably has a town like that. They probably had several. Southeastern Carousel had every horror story that had ever arisen in places like that.

Honestly, I really wanted to go down there just to look around, but we didn’t have the money to waste.

Anyway, Grace and Bella rolled into town looking for a new start, getting jobs and meeting people. Unfortunately, the people Bella met were members of a noisy motorcycle gang led by the rough and tough Serena.

Bella wanted to be like Serena, and luckily for her—this being a werewolf movie—she had just the chance.

Meanwhile, Grace was the main character and tried to save Bella from herself while simultaneously solving the murder of the curator of the Museum of Oddities.

She lined up her suspects and found out that the murderer was… Reggie Varga, of all people. But it was okay because the curator, it turned out, was evil himself and was using a magical stone to control the werewolf motorcycle gang.

I didn’t know which part was harder to look away from: the implied romance between Bella the Bully-Bruiser and Serena the werewolf, or the fact that Reggie and Grace were also given a subplot originally meant for lovers despite them being brother and sister.

I thought Carousel must have been messing with them.

It was supposed to be an ’80s movie, so that type of stuff wasn’t exactly out of place, but still, it gave us a strong case of the giggles to watch them literally shake hands during a close up shot as the sun rose at the end of the movie in a scene that would have usually called for a kiss.

I had heard of movies turning romantic subplots into friendship subplots and vice versa, but that was something different.

The movie ended with them defeating the undead curator once again and Serena and her motorcycle gang of werewolves riding off into the distance with Bella, who had found her new life.

Of course, that wasn’t to mention the terrifying second half, during which the other team members were torn to shreds at the curator’s behest.

But still, overall, the movie reminded me of The Lost Boys more than anything.

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Yeah, it was The Lost Boys but with women in their 30s and a random murder mystery thrown in.

Still, we hooted and hollered at every victory, we gasped at every death, and we clapped when the thing was over.

Something that I didn’t get a lot of, even though I had watched a lot of horror movies, was the experience of watching them with people. I had missed out on that. Sure, I had gone to theaters doing double features that got sold out and were filled with avid fans, but I had never had any friends of my own to go with.

I had to come to Carousel for that.

And as the credits started to roll, I knew it was my time to ruin the fun.

Because we had work to do.

I stood up in front of everyone as the movie ended, and I flipped on the light.

I needed to make sure that everything I said was clear and easily understood. I needed everyone to be on the same page.

As soon as I got up there, Kimberly was looking at me like she could see something had been weighing on me, and she knew I was about to lay something heavy on them.

I had tossed and turned, agonizing over how to tell them, over whether I should.

But I had no choice. I had to get the ball rolling.