Book Six, Chapter 20: The Gorging

Ramona and I stood over the broken remains of the Madame Macabre fortune teller. Like so many of the other things we had seen, this was a pale imitation of the actual animatronic, a mockery when you looked inside.

“Do you hear that?” she asked. “The whispering?”

I nodded. “The demon that was possessing it still seems to be in there. Freaky. I think these things get injured when you destroy their host.”

You think you know demons, but the demons from this storyline seemed so pitiful, able to be hurt like this.

It was surely a good thing. Being able to physically harm a demon was a rare gift in a horror movie and usually only occurred when the demon had a corporeal form.

“It’s sad,” Ramona said. She stared at it with real concern. “They’re in pain, all those little voices. I wonder what their story is.”

“Camden probably knows,” I said.

“Maybe,” she said. “I meant their real story.”

I stared down at the sad, tortured shadows.

“Probably not a happy one,” I said.

After a moment, we walked forward.

The next Madame Macabre we found was still destroyed, but much less so, as if the person holding the wooden pizza paddle didn’t want to put in the work once he realized there would be multiple.

The third one was nearly intact, except for its head, which didn’t seem to bother it that much compared to the others. She still invited us to stick our hands in and get our palms read.

There was no way in Hell. Especially since the blades she intended to stick us with were clearly visible.

We continued to follow a path of carnage, destroyed props which sang gently in the tortured screams of whatever souls these demons were composed of.

The sooner we met up with Isaac, the better. He had been down here for hours already, and from the looks of it, he had gotten some good footage for Carousel.

“We need to pick up the pace,” I said. “If Isaac has been fighting everything that moves, he’s probably not that far away. We might still be able to catch him, join up, and he can protect you On-Screen. It looks like he already got the demons that were meant to capture you.”

“Isaac’s down here?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“How did he get taken? I thought they couldn’t, because he was too young,” she said.

“Well… he kind of went on his own,” I said.

She looked skeptical.

“I know. But Avery’s Dream Girl trope really spoke to him.”

“If he’s down here alone, we need to find him,” she said.

It was great that she was concerned, but with all of the tropes propping up Isaac, he was probably doing far better than we ever could.

We ran forward, following every broken animatronic, prop, and shattered window.

And it led us right to him.

He was still wearing his Frankie the Fire Ferret mascot costume, and he was engaged in combat On-Screen with a strange centaur, whose top half was Bella Mozzarella and whose bottom half was the Pizza Boxer on all fours.

These weren’t real animatronics. No, they almost looked like plaster knockoffs, a mockery of what was above, once again.

Isaac was breaking through the monstrosity with the pizza peel and screaming the whole time he did it. He chopped away at the plaster or whatever that material was, one hit at a time in rapid succession, until the top half was separated from the bottom half. Black strands of shadow tried to pull the halves back together, whimpering in their tortured whisper.

He was a madman, filled with some sort of frantic madness. Or love.

At fourteen, what was the difference?

We were in a recreation of the lobby, except there were dozens of doors leading in all different directions. But I wasn’t focused on the doors.

One entire side of the room was an abrupt drop-off, like the building had fallen apart, but of course, this wasn’t really the building.

Down below was the dining area, sunk into a giant pit. And it was filled with people. Not to capacity, but there were at least forty down there, I observed, as Ramona and I snuck closer for a look.

“Are those demons?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Those are the unsatisfied customers.”

They were just ordinary people, wearing ordinary clothes that were dirty and torn. The dining room was where they were sleeping, and they couldn’t leave because there were no exits except up a pair of stairs that led off in the opposite direction from where we were spying on them.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The tables were filled with empty pizza boxes.

“What’s going on here?” Ramona asked. “What kind of Hell is this?”

“I think we just found the Sin Eaters,” I said.

After I had explained everything we knew about this little miniature version of Hell to Ramona, Isaac had gone Off-Screen and was able to come over to us.

Of course, this being a storyline, we then had to wait around and recreate the meeting of Isaac and Ramona to explain how they were together. They were On-Screen while I stuck as far away as I could get. I had to put my headphones on just to hear what they were saying.

“But why are you wearing that?” Ramona asked, glancing at his mascot costume.

“I didn’t want to burn myself on the oven,” Isaac said.

Ramona looked at him strangely but said nothing more.

“I’ve been scouting this place out,” Isaac said. “This is where they keep the captives. Avery’s down there. You see that tablecloth tent between the tables over there? Ruck’s guarding her. I guess he didn’t just go away to his dad’s place.”

Ramona followed where he was pointing.

“But why are they being held captive here?” she asked. “Is this our eternity? Are we trapped here forever?”

“Huh, I haven’t thought about that,” Isaac said as sincerely as he could muster. “I came here to save Avery. The way I figure, we have to defeat those demons blocking the stairway and get everyone to that weird version of Hot Head over there.”

He pointed to what appeared to be a giant version of the pizza oven that we cooked with every day. Standing next to it was Miss Pryce and her demon posse.