Chapter Forty-Five: The Wager (Patreon)

Berryman’s Dive stank of smoke and stale beer. There was an old Southern rock record playing. I didn't recognize the music, in fact, I don't think it was music that you would find in the real world, and yet somehow, I still knew that it was way out of date. This place was like stepping back in time.

The furniture was mismatched, and the tables were so old and fogged over with grime that they could probably never be clean. There might have been seating for fifty but there were only ten or so NPCs scattered about.

“Don't talk to the guy scratching his arm,” I said. My friends looked over in the direction I was staring at.

It was a skinny man with a big coat and a knitted beanie on his head. He sat at the bar near the front of the building minding his own business. When he scratched his arm, he would pull up his sleeve enough so that you could see large welts that looked like bug bites.

“Don't play number twenty on the jukebox,” I said. I had no idea why. I just knew that we did not want to play that song. I saw “This is scaring me” on the red wallpaper. I assume that was a fairly serious warning.

I continued looking around.

What caught my eye next wasn't an omen. In fact, I wasn't the only person to notice.

“Look at the bartender,” Kimberly said.

He was an older guy. Thick around the middle, unkempt Gray hair. He seemed mild-mannered as he cleaned shot glasses behind the bar. He looked at us expectantly, ready to take our orders.

Eugene. NPC. Plot Armor: 90.

That was officially the highest Plot Armor I had seen on anything in Carousel and it happened to be assigned to some random bartender who didn't even have any tropes that I could see. How strange.

Dina ordered us a round of beers and Eugene got to work supplying them.

For the most part, the bar seemed safe. More omens might come and go as the day went on but right now there were only three. The two I told you about and the one in the back. The one that we came here to see.

At the back of the bar, a man sat at a table. His dark hair was combed neatly. His face was cleanly shaven. He wore a nice suit, the kind you might see on a Southern gentleman walking the streets of Savannah. He was shuffling cards and nursing a whiskey. There were poker chips on the table. As soon as we walked in, he looked at us and smiled.

“Nice day today, wouldn't you say Eugene?” He asked.

Eugene nodded and gave out a lackadaisical “Uh-huh.”

“The only thing that could make it better would be a nice game of cards.”

“Uh-huh.”

They went on talking back and forth like that. They never really said anything of substance.

It was obvious to everyone what was going on here.

The man playing cards was called Mysterious Gentleman on the red wallpaper. Counterintuitively, his Plot Armor was only 18. It occurred to me that the highest plot armor of anyone in our group was also 18 because I had yet to use my stat tickets. After all, I hadn't known that we were going to be entering an unknown storyline today. In fact, I still hoped that we weren't going to be entering it.

I got a sneaking suspicion that perhaps the true purpose of the ticket that Dina received from Madam Celia was not only to guide us to a storyline but to make the storyline our level. I would have to confirm that with some of the veteran players, but it would explain why Celia hadn't just given us directions on a slip of paper.

“What's the trigger?” Dina asked.

I scanned the red wallpaper. Everything that I knew about the Mysterious Gentleman was as follows.

His poster read: The Mysterious Gentleman in Antemortem.

If he were a higher Plot Armor, he might have had more tropes. These were the basics. The red wallpaper also told me “Get to the Car!” was the difficulty level.

It also showed me how to trigger the Omen.

“The storyline doesn’t trigger unless you lose to him,” I said. Carousel must have set him up as being a character that could help you if you beat him in your wager but if you lost you would have to play the storyline. That was far fairer than most omens.

Kimberly, doing what she could to help, said, “His Moxie is six. If that matters.”

“So just don’t make a bet and we’ll be fine,” Anna said. “And don’t talk to him too much.”

Dina thought about that for a moment. She downed her beer. “No wonder people get stuck here for decades.”

I knew she was about to go wager something against him. She had that look on her face, the same one she had worn when she smashed the pumpkin in The Final Straw II.

Carousel must have thought she was about to go trigger the omen too because as she got up, we were suddenly On-Screen.

I had never even noticed whether we could be On-Screen for the Omen. In fact, I felt like we had always waited to get in character until after triggering it. That being said, this one may have been special seeing as much of the set-up occurred before the Omen was even triggered.

“Wait,” I said. I took a moment to gather my thoughts. I wanted to warn her about what she was about to walk into, but now that we were On-Screen, I had to do it in character. I started to think about how the veterans had played, how loose they were with inserting backstories as they went along. A package delivered to Janette in person became a package mailed to Janette because that fit the story better. Carousel had gone along with it. I wondered if I could improvise in the same way.

“I know that the psychic sent us here, but I think this is dangerous,” I said. I tried to look frustrated like I couldn’t find the right words. Luckily, that wasn’t too far from the truth. “I feel it; I can't explain why. I’m not saying psychics are fake. My grandmother had ‘the gift.’ Heck, maybe some of it rubbed off on me. Or maybe I’ve just seen this in a movie before. Either way, that guy is definitely going to try to steal your soul. I bet he’s not going to play fair either. He can probably read your mind or something.”

Dina paused to consider what I had said, seemingly confused at how I was suddenly in character. “I’ll be fine,” she said.

I felt I could talk about the psychic, that I could incorporate her into the story. That's what she and the other high-level NPCs were for. Carousel wanted a story. The lack of asthmatic breathing in my ears confirmed that I hadn’t broken the rules.

She got up from the booth that we were sitting in and walked over to the gentleman. We were close enough that we could hear them speaking, but far enough away that we were Off-Screen.

“What the hell is she doing?” Antoine asked. He looked like he was about to jump out of his seat and go grab her.

“She wouldn’t trigger the omen on purpose…. would she?” Kimberly asked.

“Yep,” I said.

She was ignoring my warning. We started to get up, hoping to grab her before she could trap us in an unknown story, but before we could get near her, she sat down at the Gentleman’s table and said, “I’d like the make a deal.”

“A deal? I’m just a simple card player. My money wagered against yours. Is that not a good enough deal?”

He smiled a toothy smile.

“I hear you deal in things much more significant than that,” she said.

He laughed. “Well for the right price, I have been known to go above and beyond. What is it you’re looking for? The location of treasure? Do you want power? Fame?”

Dina didn’t miss a beat. “I want my son back.”

The Gentleman looked legitimately surprised at first, but then he slipped back into his smile. “Where is he? Do you need a map?”

Dina wasn’t amused. “He died.”

A tear escaped her eye and rolled down her face. Otherwise, her expression was cold.

The Gentleman’s eyes lit up with excitement. “We don’t do that sort of thing here.” He paused. “Usually.”

“But you can.”

My friends had stopped short of interrupting them.

“Is this just her character talking?" Anna asked.

“I don’t think so,” Camden said.

I didn’t either. That must have been what her quest was—to bring back her son.

The Gentleman grabbed his deck of cards off the table. “I have made all sorts of deals, but bringing a child back to life… that may be more involved. Tell you what. I will tell you how to get your son back if you beat me in a game of poker. But if you lose, I get to name my prize.”

Dina stared him down. “Alive. Unhurt. No sign he ever got sick. And he lives to old age happy, free of all this. No tricks”

The Gentleman was taken aback. “I would never play a trick, not when it comes to this. But remember what I said. I will only tell you how to get him back. I promise nothing more than that.”

Dina thought for a moment. She held out her hand.

He went to shake it but held back. “And I get to name my prize.”

“Yes. Now shake my hand,” Dina said.

The Gentleman reached out and shook her hand. “Oof. What have I gotten myself into here?”

He looked up behind the bar toward Eugene, but the NPC wasn’t paying any attention.

He started dividing out the chips.

“Wait,” Dina said. “Why do you have more?”

“House rules, Darling.”

If I was counting right from where we were standing, he had given himself 180 chips in various denominations. He had given her 140. I didn’t know her Plot Armor because of her Guarded Personality trope, but I did know his. If I were to guess, they had each been given 10 chips per Plot Armor level.

Dina didn’t say anything.

The Mysterious Gentleman began dealing the cards.

~~~

Watching them play poker was kind of funny. I know I should take it more seriously, but this game was ludicrous. Every single hand that was dealt was a big hand. Within the first twenty or so, I saw at least three full houses, two straights, and two flushes. This was a movie poker game where every moment was exciting.

Chips flew across the table.

They were staring each other down trying to guess what was in the other player's hand.

Everything that the Mysterious Gentleman did seem to be going off gut instinct. It probably helped that he could Soul Read, whatever that was.

But here's the thing: he wasn't beating her by that much.

It was back and forth. At first, I thought that this must have been scripted. There was no way that a demonic entity like the Mysterious Gentleman was actually losing at poker. But truthfully there was one way that Dina could win.

Guarded Personality. Up until that point, all it did was prevent me from seeing anything about her on the red wallpaper, but as they played, I could see the frustration growing on the Mysterious Gentleman's face. He was having a tough time reading her too.

I couldn’t see every card played, but I could tell that sparks were flying.

As time wore on, he started to take the lead. I didn’t know if he was cheating or if he simply had an advantage.

Once the chips started to stack up in front of him, he started getting cocky.

“Sadly, it looks like you might not get the information you’re after,” he said. “But it’s no matter. You won’t care for long.”

Dina remained cold. “And why’s that?”

The Mysterious Gentleman smiled. “My prize. You agreed that I could name it. I think I’ll take your soul.”

There it was.

My friends all bumped up two Plot Armor. They had been buffed.

For so long, I had assumed that my Cinema Seer predictions had to be things that I had come up with on my own using my own meta-knowledge. I had rarely used it; only using it for intuitive leaps. Now, after having seen a few storylines, I knew that my Cinema Seer ability could also be used as a pretext for me to inform the audience of things I knew from the red wallpaper.

When I had warned Dina of the dangers of the Mysterious Gentleman, I had predicted that he would try to steal her soul.

A prediction he just confirmed.

Cinema Seer had just buffed her Savvy and Grit.

Her Guarded Personality trope was powered by Grit.

Whatever insight he was gleaning from her was now more difficult to obtain.

Dina smiled.

Now, the game was fairer.

They went back and forth more. Dina didn’t have a runaway victory, but I could see that the Gentleman was slowly losing his footing. The cracks in his game were showing.

Within a few dozen hands, he was down to his last few chips.

“You are very difficult to read,” he said. “Do you know that?”

“All in,” Dina responded.

The Gentleman put in his last chips. The cards were shown.

He lost: his straight against her straight flush.

That only happens in the movies.

Suddenly, we were Off-Screen. Dina hadn’t tripped the storyline after all.

The Gentleman started to laugh. “Well played.”

Dina didn’t waste any time with pleasantries.

“Tell me how to bring Sean back,” she said. “You promised.”

The Gentleman nodded his head. “A deal is a deal.”

The lights in the bar started to flicker. A faint red glow started to emanate around the room, but I didn't know what the source was. The Mysterious Gentleman closed his eyes.

He kept them closed for a while. His brow furrowed, confused. Still, he continued.

“Strange,” he said. “How did your son die?”

Dina cleared her throat. “Cancer.”

The Mysterious Gentleman pursed his lips. “I can't find him. You said that he died in Carousel?”

Dina shook her head. “No. We were in California.”

The gentleman furrowed his brow again. “California? Where is th—”

His eyes shot open. He pressed his hand to his head. It was like he was having a migraine. He started to groan in pain. He threw his body back and forth in his seat.

“The man on the top floor. He watches us through violet lights. He is the one you need. He looks for dark stories. Like yours. Like… mine.”

He started to look around the room. It was like he had never seen the place before.

“How did I get here?” he asked. “He’s done it. That sick man, he’s trapped me.”

He started to breathe very hard. His face began to change.

His teeth grew sharp and started to get longer. His eyes glowed red. I could even see the faintest points start to rise from the top of his head.

He became overwhelmed by a panicked rage.

“I have to escape. Where? How do we leave this place?”

Dina backed up from the table. She backed away until she was near where we were.

“Is there no escape? We must go t—”

Bang.

The Mysterious Gentleman dropped to the ground; a large hole had opened up in his forehead.

I looked to my right and saw Eugene, the level 90 NPC standing with a shotgun trained at the place the Mysterious Gentleman had been.

Eugene turned to us. “I had to do it. You saw him. He was… some sort of monster.”

The man spoke without emotion. He was delivering a line, nothing more. He put the gun back under the bar and went back to polishing glasses.