Arc II, Chapter 72: Manor's Blaze Eve (Patreon)

Two bodies.

I had died twice in less than a few minutes. First, I got electrocuted. I couldn’t blame anyone but myself for that one.

Second, I got placed in another body and propped up in a theater. That body died of… something. Magic? Evil? Convenience? And suddenly, I was a ghost.

I had to sit and think through everything I had just experienced even to comprehend it. My body—my real body—was still smoking when a bunch of NPCs started to haul it away.

That whole ordeal made me feel so small and powerless. Knowing that these people—if they could be called people—were so powerful that they could casually create a new body for me to use while on Deathwatch. Even after having died and come back, having been injured and healed, seeing the cold, casual way in which our captors wielded enormous power shook me to my core.

But I didn’t have time to shake for long.

Isaac was still standing in the rapidly draining jail cell, watching his body sink further and further down toward the ground.

I walked to the jail cell window and crouched down.

“You coming with me?” I asked.

He didn’t answer, but he did walk over to the window. Now, for the test, could ghosts touch each other?

My movie-watching experience said yes.

I reached in toward him with my hand. He reached out and grabbed it. It felt… not normal, but not that strange. Instead of feeling his hand properly, I felt a tingling sensation along with it. I pulled, and he rose up through the cell bars as if they were made of smoke.

Soon, he was standing next to me on the ground.

He looked around.

“It’s weird out here,” he said solemnly.

I followed his gaze.

All around us, we saw nothing but whiteness. White fog banks covered everything. It was bright, too, almost uncomfortably bright.

“Come on,” I said. “We still have a job to do.”

The fog banks blocked us from going anywhere we wanted. In fact, they only showed us one path. Out of curiosity, I tried to defy Carousels' prodding and walked into one of the white, bright clouds that prevented me from crossing the street.

I couldn’t pass through it.

This was how Carousel must have controlled Departed during their dead walks.

“So I guess we really died,” Isaac said.

Kind of a belated revelation, but I couldn’t blame him for having a hard time with it. If I wasn’t trying to look tough like I thought I ought to, I might have been just as dazed.

I had something to focus on. I had a goal.

There was a reason that this scene had existed, after all. Isaac’s death had a purpose in the narrative. Well, our deaths.

This death was supposed to reveal information about our enemy. Not the Die Cast, but Roderick Gray.

It just so happened that I knew where Roderick was. When I saw all of the off-screen cameras back in the theater, I saw him sitting on a wooden bench a few blocks from the jail.

When I saw the direction the path in the fog banks led us, I knew where Carousel was leading us. It had an idea for the story.

On-Screen.

I was caught off-guard. I hadn’t thought about how we were supposed to act once dead. Surely, Carousel didn’t want us to do the whole “in denial of death” thing. That was tiresome. I went a different route.

Serene acknowledgment.

We were going to play it as if we understood what had happened to us. We would know we were dead and we were at peace with it. That should cut out a lot of the melodrama.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s Roderick.”

Isaac followed my gaze. He didn’t say anything. He just took a deep breath.

“What are the odds that he just happened to be a few blocks away when that thing attacked you?” I asked.

Thankfully, Isaac understood his role in the conversation.

“He was there when I got arrested,” Isaac said. “He was acting strange. At the time, I thought he was just nervous, but now, I think it was more than that.”

I laughed.  “Being dead is strange. It’s like when you think of a good comeback in the shower, except it’s with everything. Suddenly, my whole life is in perspective.”

He nodded as we walked along toward Roderick.

“I’m starting to think I was the one who was wrong a whole lot more than I knew before. I think I was kind of a jerk,” he said.

I wondered if he was just saying that or if he actually had figured out why his character was killed.

The whole putting life into perspective thing wasn’t just something I was doing because I thought it would work well for the story. It was real.

Even as we walked along our vibrant path toward the future mayor, things started jumping out at me. Realizations I never made in life danced around in front of me: memories, fears, and long-lost dreams.

I almost choked up. I had to force myself not to think back to my years growing up or my way of relating to people. I had a job to do.

“What is that; is that the flask?” I asked, pointing at the object Roderick had sitting next to him on the bench.

“No,” Isaac said. “He said he got rid of it.”

We got closer and saw the look of regret on Roderick’s face. He looked ashamed. Maybe even sad.

“There’s smoke coming out of the flask,” I said.

“That can’t be,” Isaac said, walking closer and observing the flask. “That would mean…”

I sat down on the bench next to Roderick as I pretended to have a wave of disbelief move over me.

The bench held my weight, just as the ground did. Ghost movies were funny like that. The seat of your pants and the soles of your shoes were not intangible, it would seem.

“That means he did this,” I said. “It wasn’t just the spirit going out of control. He sent it after you.”

Isaac screamed in Roderick’s face, but the man did not see or hear anything. We were ghosts. He wasn’t.

“I’m going to haunt him until he dies, and then I’m going to kick his ass,” Isaac said.

“No,” I said. “He’s not done yet. He’s still got Antoine and the Geists. God forbid, he may be going after everyone who knows of his involvement. That’s the psychic and her sister. Maybe even… Oh god, maybe even Kimbe—”

“Riley,” Isaac said. “I think I know where his next target is.”

I looked at him, confused.

He was staring at a newspaper that was on the bench on the other side of Roderick. The article was circled with the title, “Geists Throw Party in Honor of Dead Carlyle.”

“The guest list is set to include prominent members of the community, including the entire Geist family. Some invitees include famed director Riley Lawrence—”

“Aw shucks,” I said.

“—and rising star actress Kimberly Madison.”

“Kimberly,” I said.

Somehow, blood rushed into my ears, and all I saw was white.

Off-Screen.

Then we weren’t there anymore.

Isaac was still next to me, but we were somewhere else altogether. We were at my house. Carousel was keeping us on a tight spectral leash. I could see Antoine, Cassie, Kimberly, Ramona, and Bobby in the house. Bobby’s dogs had made a presence there and spread their toys all about. My character’s shoes were destroyed.

“We just lost some time,” I said. “The Plot Cycle jumped forward.”

Where it had been in the middle of Rebirth, it was now a few clicks away from Second Blood.

“What are we supposed to do?” Isaac asked.

“Next scene,” I said. “We have to guide them in the right direction.”

“What’s the right direction?” Isaac asked.

“Not sure.”

We were in a dilemma. Our characters knew that Roderick was attacking the manor party. That wasn’t news to Antoine and the others. We just had to warn them in character—no big deal.

That wasn’t the problem. Despite the upcoming danger, we needed them to go to the manor party because that was the next big scene. That was Second Blood, almost certainly.

“We could try to tell them that Roderick will be there, and they need to take the flask from him,” I said. “It does seem like the spirit has to be summoned from nearby, and we need them to get the flask.”

That was the only way to save lives. Take the flask and throw it in a river. Flash forward to the Centennial. It's a piece of cake.

The problem was, how were we supposed to convey that to the others? Luckily, this had been a very long storyline, and I had said lots of things I could repeat to them using Flashback Revelation. The trope didn’t require me to have said it On-Screen as long as I didn’t expect the audience to see the flashback.

“Let’s give it a go,” I said.

We walked through the walls of my home, and as soon as we did, Bobby’s dogs started going nuts.

“What’s going on over there?” Antoine yelled, trying to be heard over the baying of hounds.

“Hush, Carmen. Whiskey, shhhh,” Bobby said fiercely.

Carmen and Whiskey were the most annoying dogs. I didn’t even know which one was which, only that Carmen barked because Whiskey barked, and then Whiskey barked because Carmen barked, and so on and so forth.

I decided to activate Flashback Revelation. The trope ran on Savvy, which I had my fair share of. That meant I should have a few uses of it, but I didn’t want to waste any of them.

I needed to let them know it was us and that we were ready to make a plan.

I started thinking about what I wanted to say, and little plaques with phrases came onto the red wallpaper. I was going to choose, “I’m here with you,” but before I could, I heard screaming.

“They’re back!” Cassie screamed.

Wait, was she looking at us?

“Riley and Isaac are here,” she said even louder. “Look at the red wallpaper. You can see their posters.”

Of course. The red wallpaper. Players were able to see other players with more ease than seeing enemies. You could see a fellow player on the red wallpaper even in pitch blackness as long as you had a line of sight. While at your base, you could even see a fellow player through walls.

Apparently, you could see them even if they were specters.

“Oh, my god!” Kimberly said as she rushed into the kitchen where we had appeared. “Riley?”

“I’m here with you,” I said, using Flashback Revelation.

“Did you hear that?” Cassie asked.

Antoine and Kimberly had. They were around when I had said it previously.

Ramona, who wandered into the kitchen, could neither hear the echo of my voice nor see me on the red wallpaper.

“Riley and Isaac are back,” Kimberly said, gesturing over toward me and Isaac.

Ramona was incredulous, to say the least.

I thought about using a Flashback to confirm I was here, but I had basically already wasted one already.

“What do we do?” Isaac asked.

“The world's worst game of charades,” I suggested jokingly.

You never know what things you should discuss before a storyline. In retrospect, it seemed obvious that we should have some kind of code for talking to each other while ghosts, but we had not taken the time for such a contingency.

Luckily, none of us were dummies. Antoine had an idea.

“We could do yes and no questions,” he said. “For yes, stand over there,” he said, pointing to one wall. “For no, over there.” He pointed to the other wall.”

That worked.

I wondered if it would be worth it to try the bell from Reply the Departed, but I had no way of suggesting it.

And so the planning began.

“Riley,” Kimberly asked. “Are we still going to the party?”

I stopped for a second, having nearly forgotten which wall meant yes. I trotted over to the yes wall and stood. They followed me, making sure to see me on the red wallpaper.

“Yes,” Antoine said. “That’s what we thought. We just don’t know why our characters would go near the place where our deaths are certain. What do we say?”

He had nailed down our dilemma.

Luckily, I had spoken about the flask before. I decided to use a Flashback on Kimberly. When she had first appeared, I had explained things to her very carefully.

“There’s this flask, like a flask you would drink hooch out of, that is used to summon a terrible spirit,” I said. My voice echoed. Only Kimberly and I could hear it.

“He’s talking about the flask,” Kimberly said. “We need to go for the flask, I think, is what he’s saying.”

Antoine nodded his head. “Gray has the flask. He’s going to use it at the party. We need to get the flask and throw it in a river,” he said, putting together all of the things we knew about the flask.

I moved over to the wall.

“That lines up with what we kind of knew,” he said. “Now, how do we get our characters to know that?”

Instead of answering yes or no, I moved over toward the red-hand chair where Cassie was sitting.

She glanced up at me and said, “Oh, of course. Just have the psychic have a vision. What would you all do without me?”

It was simple. Isaac and I could spend hours trying to show them On-Screen what we are supposed to do, or we can “talk” to the psychic and have her say it. How many times were we going to use that trick without consequences?

Psychics really are the saviors of lazy writers.