It was a week before the Western Excursion left.

We had gotten the go-ahead that we could take a couple of weeks off from storylines if we wanted as long as we were ready to go at a moment’s notice.

The rules were starting to relax after Janette’s death. It was largely believed that the Grotesque Omen was sent because she had refused to go on storylines, not simply because she hadn’t been on one in a while. I wasn’t going to argue. I needed a break from being killed and injured.

Dying really took a lot out of me.

On the night after the presentation for the Excursion, I was sitting in the common room where Grace and some other veterans were making plans for their first runs for secret lore. They were going to do some level thirty or so storylines.

They had three teams worked out and three targets: the Botanical Gardens, the Natural History Museum, and an archeological dig site on the south side of town.

All three were brimming with a variety of Omens according to the Vets' scouting work and they were going to activate some easy Omens as cover to snoop around.

I thought that was pretty clever and I wished them the best of luck. We had not been included in the planning despite having found the Secret Lore that started it all. I didn't protest.

As it grew later into the night, the common room started to clear out until it was just me. Finally.

The other groups have been using the Carousel Atlas AKA the Survivors Bible for their research. The higher-level veterans had used it to plan the western excursion and when they weren't using it Grace and the others needed it to plan their secret lore runs.

It was finally available. It wasn’t exactly off-limits, but we had not “earned” the right to use it whenever we wanted. Veterans put new players on a sort of information diet to keep them from doing anything stupid.

They were also protective over the book itself. It held a lot of precious information.

I grabbed it off the table where it had been left. It was surprisingly heavy.

I walked back to my room with it and opened the door to find Camden lying in his bunk.

“I've got it,” I said.

The book was so large it would take me hours and hours just to learn how to navigate it, but Camden didn't have that problem. His Eureka trope would make our search as easy as Googling for the answers.

“I was about to give up,” Camden said.

“Here,” I said. “I'll go get the others.”

Soon my friends, Dina, and I were gathered in a gazebo outside with a lantern, far from anyone who might hear what we were there to discuss.

“I can already tell you that there are pages missing,” Camden said. His Peer Review trope told him that the book had been altered.

That made sense. Arthur had probably altered it to prevent people from trying things that had later been determined to be against the rules.

“Carousel Family Video,” I said.

Camden stretched his fingers. He started flipping through the pages of the large book. The Atlas had been written and then edited so many times it looked like a scrapbook. Lots of the pages were covered in sticky notes, polaroids, and various random literature like flyers and other documents.

The first page that Camden showed us was a map. It was folded up into the book and had to be unfolded so that we could see its entirety. It was of Carousel. “Property of City Hall,” it said in the corner. Lots of handmade notes had been written around on the map.

The map listed everything from Patcher's Family Farm in the east where we had met Benny the Haunted Scarecrow, to the western side of the lake. It did not include the mountain or the building on the other side.

“Here,” Camden said pointing to a small strip mall near the University of Carousel.

In small letters, the words “Carousel Family Video,” were written.

“What's that little symbol next to it?” Dina asked.

“Gravestone,” I said. Rounded edges on the top. Square edges on the bottom. A small cross in the center. It was a gravestone.

“That must mean that it's dangerous,” Kimberly said. “Or that somebody died there.”

Camden nodded. “Might have happened a long time ago.” He pointed to the corner of the map where someone had written “RW, 1996.”

“Are those initials someone's name or does that signify something else?” Anna asked.

Camden flipped through the pages. “I'm guessing it's someone's initials. There are lots of initials throughout the book. I don't recognize them all.”

“That was before Arthur and Adeline got here,” I said.

Camden continued to flip through the book until he found another entry for Carousel Family Video.

“Carousel Family Video: Rewatch old storylines for a low price. No Omens,” Camden read.

“That's great,” Dina said. "We need to go there as soon as we can.

Camden shook his head. “There's another entry. ‘Manuel went missing at Carousel Family Video. No leads. No Storyline. What now?’ It was written by someone named Jessica.”

“Is there a Jessica here?” I asked. I wasn’t the one who would know everyone’s name.

Kimberly shook her head.

“Look,” Camden said. “There used to be a register of every player in the back of the book. But it looks like it was restarted about six years ago. It even has us in it. The original got torn out.”

Why would the register get torn out? Was Arthur trying to disguise how many people had gone missing without winding up on a missing poster? No. That couldn't be it. People knew about those who went missing they just didn't know what happened to them. There would be no reason to get rid of the register for that.

“Anything about letters from Carousel like Dina’s?” Antoine asked.

This was the big question.

Camden flipped to a few different areas in the book.

“There was something related to that,” Camden said, “But it’s gone now. I don’t know exactly wha—Wait a second.”

He flipped a few pages and started looking over a page that talked about the mall.

“This is strange,” he said. “Eureka is telling me there is information on this page but… I don’t… It’s not here.”

I craned my neck so that I could look at the page properly. It contained a flyer about a store opening in the mall as well as a small hand-drawn map of the mall and lots of little notes written about each store. Most of the notes were written on a piece of yellow legal-sized notebook paper that was taped to the page and folded so that it would fit.

Camden lifted up the yellow page and folded it over out of the way.

“There,” Dina said pointing to small grooves in the paper.

“Where?” he asked.

Looking closer, I saw that someone had written something on a piece of paper above the page we were looking at and they had written hard enough that their words were carved into the page below. The original page was gone but the imprint remained.

Camden’s ability told him there was relevant information on that page, but it didn’t help him read something that was all but invisible any better than a normal person could.

Camden lifted the book up at an angle so that the light from the lantern would shine on it differently and subtle shadows would reveal the words accidentally etched into the page.

"Just a second," Camden said. "There are letters that didn't imprint fully. I have to fill in the blanks real quick."

He stared at the page intently and then began to read slowly, interpreting the etched marks like hieroglyphics.

“The fortune teller told Zoe her quest went wrong and it was our fault. I don’t know what any of that meant. Zoe was really upset. Her missing poster said she was killed at the mall. I wish she had trusted me enough to tell me what was going on. I’ll never forgive myself. TC.”

“Quest,” Dina said.

That was the same word that the fortune teller had used to describe Dina’s mission to revive her son.

“Oh my god,” I said. “This has happened before.”

“When? Is there anything else about it?” Kimberly asked.

Camden shook his head. “Nothing.”

There was a short silence as we all thought about what we had just learned.

“It might have happened eight years ago,” Anna said.

“What makes you say that?” I asked. It was a very specific guess.

“TC,” Anna said. “Todd Corrigan. He came here with Chris and Valorie, right? Eight years ago.”

“Chris…” Antoine said. “He would have told me. I have to talk to him.”

“There are members missing from their original team,” I said. "Maybe this Zoe was one of them.”

“We can check the missing board,” Camden suggested.

It was a good idea.

We were out late discussing everything we could learn from the book. I even saw several references to Deathwatch, but they didn't explain much. There were little clues like: "Wallflower use Deathwatch here" or "Vision of Death works well in this storyline." Nothing about Film Buffs' version of Deathwatch that Camden could find. There was a section that explained what Deathwatch was, but it didn't go into much detail. Film Buffs were rare. Not as much was known about them. We needed more time to sort through all of the little details, but it was getting late. We would have to get ahold of it again later.

Before we went in for the night, I had one last request.

“What about Rescue Tickets?” I asked. We hadn’t taken the book to look for that, but I couldn’t resist.

Camden looked through the book. He found a section written by Adeline.

“There were once tropes called rescue tickets that could be won from certain storylines around Carousel. They would allow you to bring your fallen friends back to life by completing the storylines they failed. Every archetype had its own rescue tropes. They disappeared in Fall 2010. I cannot understand why Carousel would do this. I thought it wanted us to get to the end. Research has failed to find the reason. Scouting tropes have failed. We do not know why they disappeared or how to get them back. What will we do?”

The Carousel Atlas had the official version of what happened. That wasn't surprising.

“Whoa,” Camden said. “There used to be a lot of stuff about them in here. There are easily fifty pages missing or more.”

“Why would they tear that stuff out?” Antoine asked. “Just because they couldn't figure out how to get them back doesn't mean no one could.”

I stayed silent. Still, it was a good question. All someone really needed to remove was the stuff that talked about abusing them. Removing all knowledge didn’t seem productive.

We talked about it as we headed back to the Lodge. I tried to stay as quiet as possible. Soon, we had the book back where it belonged and were crawling back into bed.

If it wasn’t for my sleeping trope, I would not have been able to rest that night. There were too many things to think about.

The next morning, I decided to take a walk around Camp Dyer. It was strange that this place had become my home in the last few weeks but I hadn't actually explored it.

As long as you didn't venture into the lake there weren't any omens other than the one inside of the restricted cabin on the grounds themselves, but still, the place gave an uneasy feel.

The sound of children's laughter sent shivers up my spine. It was cloyingly sweet. You didn't have to be a Film Buff to know that it was only there to contrast the danger and evil that lurked at Camp Dyer.

As I walked I got a good look at the restricted cabin. It was locked up, boarded up, and the entire cabin had been encircled in police tape.

Whatever storyline took place at Camp Dyer was so high level that I couldn't even see its name on the red wallpaper. All I saw was “Warning”. That was usually what showed up when I looked at an omen that was just too powerful for my Savvy.

It was incredible that the veterans had decided to make camp at a place with a storyline so strong. But the sentiment that the veterans often repeated was that predictability was more important than anything else when it came to storylines.

How wrong could they be? They had lived when others had died. Dyer's Lodge had been their home for years.

“Can I join you?” a familiar voice asked.

It was Roxie.

“Sure,” I said.

I expected her to have something to say about the Rulekeeper. We were two of the few people who shared that remarkable secret but even when we were alone we didn't talk about it.

“How are you managing?” she asked.

“Better than ever,” I lied.

Roxie smirked.

“What are you doing all the way out here?” she asked.

I realized that the reason she had gotten curious was because I was far closer to the restricted cabin than most players ever went. But I had passed it by. That wasn't my destination.

“When I was in the last storyline,” I said, “One of the NPCs mentioned having a house out on Dyer Lake. I hadn't seen any houses. I was just thinking maybe if I went around the cove I might be able to see some.”

“Oh,” she said. “You might. Just remember that NPCs say a lot of things. It only becomes true if you push the story in that direction.”

I nodded my head. She was probably right. All of the storylines in Carousel couldn't actually be canonically true. Maybe there were no houses on Dyer Lake. If there were, there's no telling if one of them belonged to some random character just because she said it did.

“So what do you think of the Western Excursion?” I asked.

Roxie didn't say anything at first. She looked across the lake and gathered her thoughts.

“I hope it works,” she said.

“But you don't think it will?”

She shook her head.

“I feel like we're missing something," she said. "I doubt we can force our way across the finish line."

I nodded.

We continued walking for as long as we could do so before additional omens started popping up. There was a generic omen that guarded the woods west of camp. It was a powerful one, just like the one in the cabin. It was there to protect the boundary, I assumed, because it was everywhere I looked along the edge of the forest.

Roxie and I continued talking as we walked back. I asked her how long it took her to be brave enough to use her Looks Don't Last trope, the same one that Kimberly was so afraid of.

“From the beginning,” Roxie said. “My team was dead before we even got to Camp Dyer. I was put on another team with Lara, they were already a few levels ahead of me. I did whatever it took to contribute. Even if that meant dying.”

We made it back In time for lunch.

As I got there I found my friends at a picnic table with Chris and a few of the Bowlers.

“Where did you run off to?” Anna asked.

“Just stretching my legs,” I said.

Anna looked back at the way we had come from, likely noticing that the restricted cabin was in that direction.

“Grace and her team are going to the bowling alley in a few days,” she said. “They said we could come if we wanted to.”

“Oh?” I asked. “Sounds like… fun.”

Reggie, the Bruiser (Gentle Giant aspect) I had gone on the Grotesque storyline with was there too.

“We’re going to show you how to clear the place in case you ever want to go,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, forcing a smile.

Noting my apprehension, Grace said, “You won’t have to run any storylines. I know you all are still resting.”

That was certainly true. The thought of dying… so that I could roll a ball across a wooden floor was not appealing at all.

How long would it be until I was willing to die for recreational purposes?

I had not been at Carousel long enough to be ready for a fun night out, but knowing different ways to neutralize omens would probably be a lifesaver.

I wondered if the bowling alley had an arcade…