Book Six, Chapter 64: Interlude

Bobby Gill held the ticket in his hands all the way up the stairs. Backstage Access. A proper scouting trope that belonged to Lila, but she would let him borrow it at night so he could walk the dogs.

He tucked it into his pocket. He had purchased a big coat that could keep him warm on cool nights. It was one of the only expenditures he had made on himself; most of his money went to the dogs.

As he walked through the roof access door and over to the makeshift kennel he had designed for them, with access to an air-conditioned room, he withdrew two leashes from his coat pocket. He only carried two because he didn’t need more than that. Even with the ability to control the dogs thanks to his license, if he tried to walk more than two, they would manage to tangle him up.

So, he did what he did every night as the sun began to set. He took all five dogs out two at a time, with one of them getting to go twice.

Tonight’s winner was Shasta. She was a big, friendly dog, possibly a wolfhound, but like the others, a mixed breed. For the final trip of the night, it would be Shasta and Doughboy, who were best friends. They worked the best together, and Shasta was the smartest of all the dogs.

He would need her.

His Animal Whisperer trope gave his pets the enemy trope called Animals Are Psychic. Every storyline he had taken them on, he had learned new and exciting applications for that trope, and he rewarded his dogs every time they surprised him with their cleverness.

He knelt down and hooked his second leash onto Doughboy. The three of them turned to leave.

“Going for a walk?” a voice called from the other side of the roof.

Bobby strained his eyes to see who was talking to him. It was Logan, lying out in one of the beach chairs, reading some horror book he had found in a storyline. Back when he had been at Camp Dyer, Logan had amassed quite a collection of horror books and often lamented having lost them.

How Logan was reading by starlight alone on a cloudy night like this, Bobby didn’t know, but then his night vision had never been that great.

“Yep. Last one of the night,” Bobby said.

“Just going around the block?” Logan asked.

“We’ll see where they take me,” he answered.

Logan stared at him across the roof as if he wanted to say something else, but instead he just said, “Well, be safe. I really wish you wouldn’t do this at night.”

Not this conversation again, Bobby thought.

“It’s safest at night,” he said. “There are fewer Omens. I guess Carousel doesn’t see the point in putting a bunch of odd things out when no one can see them.”

That much was true, but then again, the amount of Omens was never the problem. The problem was the Omen that found you.

Bobby was beyond caring about that.

“Anyway, I’ll be back,” he said.

“I’ll be here waiting for you,” Logan said.

Bobby wrapped his coat tightly around his body and walked the dogs over to the access door and then down the stairwell to the exit. He didn’t like to take the dogs out through the restaurant, which was objectively safer, because the staff would always yell at him, and even if it was just words on a script, it interrupted his night.

So, he took the exit straight from the stairwell.

Shasta pulled him to the left hard, and Doughboy joined her soon after. She was always the first to notice an Omen. Bobby looked to the right and saw Isaac’s favorite zombie lumbering about aimlessly. He wouldn’t attack you unless you tried to talk to him, or god forbid, help him, but Shasta really didn’t want to risk walking by him. So instead, Bobby took the long walk out the other side of the alley.

There, the only risk was a homeless man prophesying the coming of three sisters back from the grave to seek revenge. He had been prophesying that one for a while. Before that, it was something about an old-timey blacksmith who had been betrayed.

So much betrayal here in Carousel.

“Ah, the sisters,” he croaked, eyes clouded like stormwater. “Three women, pure as the driven snow, until the men with dirty hands dragged them to the gallows. Innocents, strangled by ambition. Now they stir in the earth, teeth sharp, patience gone. They don’t just want revenge; they want to share their misery. Death rots even innocence, you know. It curdles. Turns love to hate, turns grief to teeth.”

Bobby took a coin out of his pocket and handed it to the homeless man.

“Thank you,” the man said, seeming to snap out of his prophecy.

Just like that, the Omen disappeared. Nothing to worry about anymore.

“You should have let him finish,” a familiar voice said. Bobby didn’t have to look to know who it was. “It’s a good story.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Thought I would join you,” Jules said. She had ditched her army fatigues and was dressed for rainy weather, but Bobby hoped none would come.

Shasta and Doughboy were quick to run up to Jules and beg for pets, which she gave them in good measure.

“I didn’t ask you to come,” Bobby said.

“Yeah, I’m quite the party crasher, aren’t I?” she responded. “But, you did equip my trope.”

He didn’t push back. He wanted her there, even if he didn’t want to say it. She knew more than she let on.

He simply walked past her, and she turned and joined him.

Shasta and Doughboy were so good at spotting Omens, Bobby practically didn’t even need Lila’s scouting trope, but there was no way he would go out without it. Carousel was a scary place, and the dogs couldn’t actually speak, even if he felt he understood what they were trying to say with every mannerism.

“I suppose your friends think you’re going to the park,” Jules said.

“It is the safest place to walk the dogs,” Bobby said. “We have the whole thing mapped out.”

“Naturally. Was that the Film Buff’s doing?” she asked.

Bobby shook his head. “He started it, but Isaac took it over. It’s his hobby these days,” he said.

“Good for him. I’m impressed that kid gets out of bed in the morning. So instead of the park, we’re going where?” she asked.

Was she going to tease him? He wondered. Was she going to talk him out of it? Worse than that, he feared that he would give in, that she would be able to do it.

He gripped tight on Shasta and Doughboy’s leashes and willed them to move faster, and they obeyed.

“You know where I’m going,” Bobby said, picking up the pace.

The trip across town to the north side was not a quick one, especially with Shasta keeping him as far away from Omens as she possibly could.

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Bobby could technically open up sound stages to walk across because of Lila’s trope, but that would just add more time, and frankly, he wanted to be afraid. He wanted the adrenaline rush. He hated every part of himself that sought comfort or safety.

As they arrived at his destination, he looked up at the street sign. Toother Street. How many times had he come here, and every time walked home empty-handed?

“You know most people over here are in bed,” Jules said. “It’s a sleepy part of town. I don’t know who you’re going to talk to.”

“I’m not here to talk to anybody,” Bobby said. “I just want to look, see if the dogs pick up anything.”

After all, thanks to Bobby’s trope, animals were psychic, and Shasta was getting better and better at it. In fact, he felt that Shasta knew exactly what he was looking for, and every time Doughboy would fool around or sniff something another dog had marked, she would go over there and nip at him to get him back on track, searching for a scent that only a psychic dog could find.

“What makes you think this is the place you should look?” Jules asked. “Is this where she went missing?”

Bobby shook his head. “I don’t know, but it is the last place that I know for sure she was.” He had been given the address. It was one of the settings for The Grotesque storyline that Janet, his wife, had gone on before she disappeared.

When Riley finally got a trope to be able to show Bobby the film itself, this was the only scene that she was in, walking up to one of these houses, never entering, and as far as Bobby knew, never leaving.

But Shasta knew better than that. She followed a ghastly scent that led through the neighborhood and then back out, and Bobby followed her, dodging around the Omens in the night, bats with horse heads flying from tree to tree, the occasional serial killer staring him down from afar.

Every time he wanted to go home, he chastised himself. How could he save Janet if he was a coward?

Shasta was getting further this time than she ever had before.

“Come on, girl. Where did she go?” Bobby asked her.

As they walked, the area became less and less populous. The grass grew higher, and the trees grew gnarlier. The north side of Carousel was mostly a transitional area, with lots of very old Omens and a road that led to Carousel Heights.

Shasta pulled him onward until eventually she came right up to the edge of a graveyard. Doughboy would have continued walking, but he sensed whatever Shasta had sensed a few seconds later and yelped.