Chapter Eighty-Eight: Setting Up The Pins
The day the Bowlers planned to go to the alley was a Tuesday. It was important to them that we go on a Tuesday because different NPCs occupy different lanes on different days.
Tuesday was the least crowded day and the only one where the four left-most lanes were unoccupied. It was also the day with the fewest Omens to contend with.
Sunday night, my friends and I went to the Diner for a bite to eat and then headed across the street to find a missing poster with a woman named Zoe on it.
Camden found it at first glance.
MISSING
Name: Zoe Paulson
Plot Armor: 28
Place Last Seen: Seasons Party Supply and Costume Shop, East Wing, Jubilation Mall
Occupation: Outsider (Newcomer Aspect)
Reward: 480 Dollars
“She was an Outsider too,” Dina said. Looking at Antoine, she said, “You really need to talk to Chris about this.”
“I don’t want to distract him while he’s prepping,” Antoine said. “I’ll talk to him at the bowling alley. He said he’d go.”
Dina didn’t look pleased, but she let it go.
We talked more about what a failed quest from the past could mean and if it really was what we thought it was, but I didn’t say much of anything. My mind was numb from theorizing. I wanted to get some answers. I had spent so much time sifting through what little information we had that I was starting to feel a strong sense of dread.
Soon, the tension would burst, and I wasn’t sure we would be ready.
As I awaited our departure, I had my mind set on finding Lara and discussing the Deathwatch ability. I knew for a fact that psychics had tropes that granted it and Lara was one of the more accessible veterans to talk to.
More to the point, of the three Psychics, she was the only Seer and the only one I actually knew. When we had gotten back, she had gone on a run with a higher-level team that lasted two days. It was rare for her to go out on a storyline because she didn’t actually have to most of the time.
Luckily, Lara returned from her trip late Sunday night and was sitting in the common area reading a magazine when I came back from a walk on Monday before lunch.
I quickly made my way to her.
“Lara,” I said. “Can I talk to you about something?”
She looked up from her magazine and smiled. “I heard you took my warning to heart,” she said. “Don’t suffer in silence. I was worried that I had been too vague.”
“Oh, right. It was very helpful at Second Blood. Thank you.” I said.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “You need another reading?”
I shook my head. “Actually, I died in that last storyline and got this trope,” I said, holding out my Director’s Monitor trope. “It gives me Deathwatch. I was hoping to ask you some questions about it.”
“Deathwatch, huh?” she said with a smile, grabbing my ticket and reading over it. “Carousel Family Video. We don’t go there. It’s good that you can rewatch storylines on your own. Very interesting.”
“Why do we not go there?” I asked. I couldn’t let on that we had taken the Carousel Atlas and looked it up.
“People have died there,” she said. “We don’t know how. There are no Omens in the store. Eventually, the older players decided it wasn’t worth the risk. Even back when they could rescue people, the players were scared of an Omen that they couldn’t find or predict.”
I nodded my head.
“As for Deathwatch,” she said. “What exactly do you need to know?”
“When you use Deathwatch… does anything strange happen?”
She thought for a moment. “I wouldn’t say strange. For me, time slows down right before I die and I have this huge, powerful vision of things to come in the story. I can’t do anything to change the future without other tropes, so I tend not to use it. For a Psychic, you don’t really need to die to find out what happens. I honestly haven't explored that line of tropes.”
“Oh,” I said. That was disheartening. I considered leaving her be, but I still wanted to know what she had to say about the audience. “I sit in a movie theater with my eyes fixed on the screen.”
“That’s probably a better experience,” she said with a laugh. “Wallflowers can stay on set if they are permanently written off with Deathwatch. They watch what happens, but they can’t talk to their teammates or intervene without extra tropes. That’s probably why they don’t use it so often either.”
“Oh, that's good to know. The thing is,” I said, “When I’m in the theater, I’m not alone.”
“Not alone?” she said, contemplating what I had told her. “What do you mean by that? There are others in the seats with you?”
I nodded. “I wasn’t able to turn my head and look at them, but I could hear them cheering at the end.”
“Wow, that’s certainly… strange. They’re probably NPCs.”
“Maybe,” I said. I wasn’t confident about that.
“You don’t think so?” she asked. “What are you thinking?”
“Dead players,” I said. “Other Film Buffs. The audience.”
“The audience? As in The Audience,” Lara said. “I see. Look, sometimes, I have visions that don’t make any sense. Things that make me question whether I am seeing a storyline or… something else. The way psychics—and Film Buffs apparently—work can expose parts of Carousel that aren’t as easy to understand. I wouldn’t go jumping to conclusions just yet.”
I nodded and said, “Thanks.”
“Any time,” she said.
I went back to my room and shut the door. I laid out on my bunk and immediately started watching The Astralist in my mind. There were no claps at the end. I was in an empty theater. The people in the theater, whoever they were, only seemed to stick around to watch live performances. Truthfully, I was a little relieved by that.
Word of our trip to the bowling alley got out and a few other players decided to come along, including Travis and his brother Vernon, along with their usual team. Bobby did not join them.
Dina went back and forth on whether or not she would come with us. She didn't want to go bowling but at the same time, she did want to be around to hear Chris talk about Zoe Paulson. It wasn't until Antoine pointed out that he would likely have that conversation in private that she decided to pull out altogether.
On Tuesday at 9:00 o'clock in the morning, everyone making the trip met in front of the lodge.
Sixteen people in total showed up.
My friends, Chris, the five Bowlers, and the five members of Travis' team.
I expected to have to take the lead because of my “I don't like it here” ability, but it turned out that there were plenty of other scouting tropes that could get us across town safely.
Grace had an ability called The Scary Part of Town that helped detect Omens. Her ex-boyfriend and current teammate Jesse, an Outsider, had a trope called Life on the Streets that also helped. Between them, they could see Omens and avoid them nearly as well as a Hysteric could.
Grace’s trope made threats show themselves in some visible way, which was quite the experience. For instance, we passed a community swimming pool that had two swimmers, but it had a bunch of people’s belongings placed around it on chairs and inside beach bags. Anyone who looked at it would ask the same question: where are the rest of the people?
My trope told me that you trigger the storyline by swimming or laying out on the chairs. The movie was called Chlorine and its poster showed a snorkel at the bottom of a pool. Its difficulty level was “Something isn’t right here,” which I took to mean it was medium difficulty or so.
None of that insight mattered with Grace’s trope, because as we walked by, the water in the pool bubbled up and burst like a fountain into the air to signify there was an Omen there.
The drawback to her trope was that some storylines would do more than just show themselves. We found ourselves being followed down the street by a white van and another time a tree almost fell on us, but we managed to get around it and to safety.
Jesse’s trope told him how to avoid Omens, but didn’t specifically tell him how they triggered.
“Don’t look at it,” he said as we passed the pool.
That would likely stop you from triggering it, but not in a particularly elegant way.
Between them, we managed to avoid all of the Omens as we made our way through town.
That’s where the real education began.
Grace’s Rules for Clearing the Bowling Alley
Rule One: Remember what day of the week it is. NPCs and Omens have schedules too.
For Tuesday:
Rule Two: Get to the alley before 11:20 A.M. DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH THE RANTING WOMAN’S REFLECTION.
Rule Three: Lock the doors and flip over the closed sign at the following times for ten minutes. Don’t just leave it that way or the manager will change it when you are not looking and Omens will get in. Lock the back door to avoid The Act of God. It will stay locked on its own.
-11:25: The Quiet Man will arrive and pull on the door. He will leave pretty soon after.
-12:45: The coughing scientist will come here for lunch. Don’t let him in but if he finds a way in somehow, don’t go near him. He is contagious.
-1:30: The crying woman with the raspy voice will try to come in and call out a player’s name. If they respond to her at all, they have triggered the Omen. Best not to let her in.
Rule Four: There is a bowling ball bag on a bench on lane four. Do not touch it unless you want to go to hell.
Rule Five: The birthday party is a bit distracting, but the only Omen is whatever is in the red wrapping paper. While the kids and adults are distracted with bowling, steal the red present and throw it in the trash. If they start opening presents before you do this, leave immediately. If the presents have already been opened, leave immediately.
Rule Six: Do not bowl three strikes in a row. A crowd will start to form behind you to watch and somehow The Quiet Man will be in it. If you have two strikes, intentionally bowl a gutter and mark it a nine.
Rule Seven: Someone will call asking for a player after 1:30 pm. It is the raspy-voiced woman from before. When the employee calls a player’s name, tell her there is no one here by that name.
Rule Eight: The games in the game corner sometimes play themselves. Do not be alarmed. There is no known Omen related to this.
Rule Nine: Leave by 4:00 pm.
Rule Ten: No street shoes beyond the carpeted area. This will get the manager angry. He will yell at you and go out back to cool down, leaving the back door unlocked.
Those people must have loved bowling more than I love just about anything. They did all that just so that they could go out and roll a ball down a slick wooden path. Maybe after you had done it a few times you would get used to it but as Grace listed off her rules, I was second-guessing the trip.
“Are there any questions?” Grace asked as we waited around the corner from the bowling alley.
“Why in the world did you decide to do this?” Antoine asked.
“My brother likes to bowl; I like to solve puzzles. It was great practice learning how to scout out and neutralize Omens. Any other questions?”
Camden raised his hand. “I thought you all ran a storyline when you came here?”
“We normally do,” Grace said. “The Quiet Man or perhaps we wait until sundown and do Red Grease which can trap you in any building along this road. We won’t today.”
She unequipped her scouting trope and led us to the bowling alley.
As soon as we rounded the corner, we saw the ranting woman. She held a large cup and stood in front of the bowling alley staring at herself in the window, which had tinting on it that made it reflective. I avoided looking at her reflection, but could not stop myself from hearing her conversation, which was itself quite unnerving:
Ranting woman:
"Glass and silver, sneaky, sneaky! Ah, the sun's laughter, too bright, too bright! Stolen, it's stolen. Echo of a stolen smile, oh, the twisted waltz. There's always a thread, a thread, holding on...oh, don't cut it, don't dare! I'll unravel, come undone, can't blink, can't. Laughing...are you laughing? Is it you or me? The dark reaches, reaches out, cold as ice, cold as...is that me? Speak, speak up, no voice, just echoes. Trapped, can't move. I should move. No, no, I can't. Spinning, yes, spinning. A stage of silver, the world's a whirl, spinning, spinning. Days go by, night falls, then day again. Still here, still...still."
I avoided looking at her altogether once I heard her speaking. Poor woman.
Grace had an alarm that she used to make sure she locked the door and flipped over the sign at the right time. She told us that we had to stop bowling and pay attention for the whole ten minutes that the door was locked.
As we walked in, I was almost shocked by how ordinary the place looked. NPCs bowled and laughed. I could smell nacho cheese bubbling in a crock pot. Hot dogs spun on one of those rolling warmers you might see in a gas station.
I was immediately alerted to the kid's birthday party. I eyed the stack of presents on one of the tables wearily, but the party was just starting and the red present had not arrived yet.
In lane four, I saw the bowling bag that would send you to hell. The bowling bag was stuffed with clothes in addition to a bowling ball. There were a bunch of lottery tickets ripped in half on the table near the bag, as well as an ashtray full of cigarette butts.
It was a difficult storyline called Death Toll. I could not see how to trigger it, but just looking at it sent shivers down my spine thanks to my Hysteric trope.
I could not even think of relaxing or having fun. I got some bowling shoes and sat on a bench near the lanes we were staying at as one of the arcade machines started paying out coins and yelling "High Score," even though there was no one over there.
Grace quickly walked through the door that led to the area behind the pins so that she could lock the back door.
Shortly after we arrived, an NPC mother and child (who looked scared to death) came in and dropped off the present with the red wrapping paper, Grace's ex Jesse went and swiped it off the table and slid it into a trashcan before anyone could notice. The mother and child were gone and out the door before any of the kids had even seen them drop off the present.
With everything prepared and death abated temporarily, we started to bowl.
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