The Game at Carousel: A Horror Movie LitRPG

I stared down at the page.

The name Sheriff Thomas Patcher stared back up at me.

What happened to Sheriff Jonathan Miller? They made Tommy Patcher the sheriff—the very guy who we suspected helped foil the community's attempts at finding Tamara Cano.

It made sense that they would have replaced him. Sheriff Miller had seemed to sincerely want to solve the mystery.

I took in my surroundings. I was standing right outside a large office that just happened to have my name on the door. According to the plaque, my title was Lead Investigative Producer, which meant I was the boss now.

I thought climbing the Corporate Ladder was supposed to be difficult.

I heard noise in the distance, far down the hall, and I decided to follow it.

"And we're live in five… four… three… two…."

I followed the voice down the hall, and what I saw was a large set for a news station. There was an anchor's desk and several cameras set up to capture the various well-groomed people sitting behind it. There was a weatherman and one person who must have been on sports.

But that was not who was live on the air at the moment. As the countdown came to one, Kimberly sat at the anchor's desk in shock. A light came on, indicating that they were live, and at first, I thought Kimberly wasn't going to realize what was going on. But she figured it out, seemingly just in the nick of time.

She stared into the camera and read from the teleprompter. She was on-screen.

“Good evening, Carousel. Authorities are currently investigating a disturbing new phenomenon: a syndicate of people who ‘dine and dash.’ That’s right; this group has been targeting local restaurants, enjoying lavish meals before disappearing without paying. The Carousel Police Department is working hard to apprehend these culprits and bring an end to their deceitful spree.

"In other news, a wave of crimes involving smashed and missing lawn ornaments has left the community in fear. Residents across Carousel are reporting the disappearance of their cherished garden decorations, creating an atmosphere of unease. Police are urging anyone with information to come forward as they intensify their efforts to catch those responsible.

"Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to cover these unfolding stories. I'm Kimberly Madison, and this is Carousel News 9.”

She managed to get out her lines without fumbling them. As she finished and went off-air, she put on an expression to show just how disappointing it was to be reporting on stories like that.

As soon as Kimberly saw me, she went off-screen.

She also went white.

Her expression of surprise worried me greatly. As I stared at her, I realized why.

She had aged ten years. She was wearing makeup and her hair was done very well, but it was clear she was ten years older. Which meant, of course, that I was probably also ten years older, which was why she looked so shocked.

She came to me immediately and said, "How do I look?"

"You look great," I said.

She rubbed my face to try and see if my rapid aging was the result of makeup or otherwise.

"Oh my gosh, we're in our early 30s," she said.

"I know, right," I said. "Carousel might as well have just killed us."

I gestured for her to follow me to my office, and as we went along, I found the NPC who had given me the folder on Eastern Carousel and asked her to get me everything we had out of Eastern Carousel for the last ten years related to homicide or any major crimes. She looked at me like it was a gargantuan task, but ten minutes later, when she walked into my office, the folder she had collected, while not empty, was not exactly full.

"Ten years later?" Kimberly asked.

"Yep," I said. "Classic storytelling device. Kind of explains some things, like why we never saw any enemies. We were in the 'before' section. If we saw too strong of evidence, it would have been weird for us to just leave it alone for a decade."

"So now we go back out there?" Kimberly asked.

"Yep," I said. "We'll have to do a whole performance explaining why we're gonna do it, but that should be pretty easy."

I handed her the file I had been given when I first got there.

"This says the active sheriff is Antoine Stone?" Kimberly said.

"Sure does. After the death of Sheriff Thomas Patcher."

She was as perplexed by that as I was. We hadn't gotten to spend much time with Tommy Patcher, but he certainly didn't seem the type to be a leader.

"Check this out," I said, as we started looking through the files we had been given, as well as some of the files that were already in my office. "It says that we passed forward our evidence and footage to the CBI."

"CBI?" Kimberly asked.

"The Carousel Bureau of Investigation," I said with a grin.

"Of course."

"They concluded that our witness, the mother of the missing child, was unreliable and had a vendetta against local authorities and community members. She was hostile when approached, so the CBI decided not to move forward with the investigation."

At least our characters hadn't given up completely. We had tried to get the real cops involved.

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Looking through all the information we had from Eastern Carousel didn't reveal a whole lot. There were a few crimes, sure, but mostly domestic disputes. There didn't seem to be a whole lot of crime in Eastern Carousel. But other news was not so positive.

Eastern Carousel had gone through droughts, famines, and all sorts of agricultural and economic upheaval. We had lots of stories of people leaving town, looking for better prospects elsewhere. It sounded like Eastern Carousel wasn't the happy little farming town it might have been before.

After we had searched and felt satisfied, the scene that we had come to expect started to play out on-screen.

Kimberly walked down the hall toward me.

"Hey, Kimberly, come here a second," I said. "Do you remember Tamara Cano?"

Kimberly paused for a second, not in reflection but out of curiosity. "Of course I remember, Riley."

"Well, check this out. Two residents that we could connect to either the disappearance of Tamara Cano or the death of Benny Harless—if you remember him—have been killed."

"Homicide?" she asked, looking at the folder.

"Yep," I answered. "Strange, huh?"

We continued to go back and forth for a while, and we just remained on-screen, so we kept talking. Carousel was mining us for a good conversation, something that could justify our decision to return to the case.

I leaned against my window and looked out over Carousel Proper.

"What investigative journalists we turned out to be, huh?" I asked.

"It's a little early to say 'turned out,'" Kimberly said. "We still have our whole careers ahead of us."

"Doesn't feel that way," I said. "Remember when we told ourselves that finding Tamara Cano was gonna be the beginning for us, that we were going to be real journalists? What happened to us?"

Kimberly paused and reflected.

"We did the best we could, Riley. We passed our information on to the authorities. They are the ones that decided not to move forward. We do our jobs. That’s all we can do."

"That's what I tell myself too," I said.

Kimberly pulled a missing poster from the file folder and stared at it. The picture of Tamara Cano haunted her. "I guess we were never investigating a missing person," she said. "By now we can probably go ahead and call it a homicide."

"I'm afraid so," I said. “Another homicide out in little old Eastern Carousel.”

We didn’t say anything for a time.

"So, a murdered sheriff?" she asked. "That sounds newsworthy."

"You think it's worth checking out?" I asked.

"If only we could get the Lead Investigative Producer to approve it this time."

I smiled. "I don't think that'll be a problem," I said.

We got a cameraman and a company car and were gone while there was still plenty of daylight.

The drive to Eastern Carousel was pretty quick. It wasn't actually that far away by car. Still, Carousel got a few shots of us driving away from the setting sun.

When we got there, it became very evident what changes had been made to Eastern Carousel. The place was more desolate. Half of the shops in town had shut down, with the exception, of course, of the general store, thank goodness.

Dina's uncle's gas station was now called Patcher's One-Stop Shop.

The fields were depressing. The harvest was going to be meager; I could tell that even though I knew very little about farming. I had seen the fields ten years ago, and by comparison, things were looking bleak. The crops hung lifelessly. There was desperation and dust in the air.

As we came into town, we saw a water tower that had been spray-painted with the words "Ten years, where is Tamara Cano?"

We knew our way to the sheriff's station. Within no time, we found ourselves in the audience of the acting sheriff himself, Sheriff Antoine Stone.

On screen.

"Howdy, Sheriff," I said.

"Hello," Antoine responded.

He decided to play it as if he didn't recognize us. But as we sat in his office and stared at each other, we tried to see the humor in our rapid aging.

"How can I help you folks?" Antoine said.

"Sheriff Stone," Kimberly started, "you may not remember us, but around ten years ago, we were in town doing some investigative reporting for Carousel News 9."

"Oh, you," he said. "Yeah, I remember you. It's not every day that big city reporters come to Eastern Carousel. So, I suppose you heard about the murder of my predecessor and thought we were worth your time again."

"We thought that we would come down for a follow-up," Kimberly said. "The murders were definitely a factor, given that the two decedents were tied to both the disappearance of Tamara Cano and the death of Benny Harless."

"The death of Benny Harless," Antoine said. He thought for a moment. "I hadn't thought about that in years. That was ruled an accident. We can't exactly connect crimes just because the people involved knew each other. Not here in Eastern Carousel. It's a small town; if we did, all crimes would be connected."

He smiled, and I could see he was toying with us. He had clearly planned out how he would approach his character.

"Cut the crap," Kimberly said. "You know that what happened was suspicious. You know that there was more to that story."

Antoine looked down at his desk.

"If there was something suspicious," he said, "I doubt that this is a place where you could ever uncover it."

"What do you mean by that?" Kimberly asked.

Antoine paused and then spoke. "The last 10 years have been tough for Eastern Carousel. People are always looking for somebody to blame. Ten years ago, I was the hotshot who caught a fugitive. Nowadays, I've got a target on my back. Folks are blaming me for these murders somehow. The way people are talking and acting these days, it wouldn't surprise me if there was a conspiracy. And that's off the record."

I wondered what had happened to Antoine's character that would justify his statement. Perhaps after the death of Sheriff Patcher, the townsfolk had started eyeing him with the same suspicion that they had shown us. His character was finally seeing the true Eastern Carousel.

"Sheriff," Kimberly said, "I sense that you don't have many allies right now."

"Your senses are sharp," Antoine said.

"Well, maybe you could use some," Kimberly said.

Antoine paused and then said, "If I let you help me, you gotta understand one thing. Time moves fast and slow at the same time in a place like this. To some of the people here, ten years ago was yesterday."

"I know the feeling," Kimberly said.

"Suppose you might want to talk to who I got locked up in a cell," Antoine said. Was he using an accent?

"Who?" I asked.

"Well, it just so happens that Tamara Cano's mother was caught vandalizing things around town with spray paint. Seems she thinks ten years is long enough."

"I suppose we should talk to her," I said.

This was a small-town sheriff's office, so we just walked a few rooms over and saw Dina lying down in a cell. When she saw us, she started to holler.

"Not you," she said. "Back for another story?"

We had promised Dina's character we would help find her daughter, and we had broken that promise. We had left this town and her problems behind us.

"Miss Cano," Kimberly said, "I can't imag—"

"So you do remember me. How come you didn't remember whenever I sent your station letters every month trying to get to you? I called every week for three years, it felt like, just trying to get some more attention on my daughter."

Kimberly paused. "I'm sorry," she said. "There was nothing we could do with the investigation. We handed it off to the CBI."

"The CBI?" Dina ranted. "All they wanted to do was prove that nothing bad had happened so that they could go back to the city. They ignored my calls, too."

"Well, we're back on the case now," Kimberly said. "You don't need to forgive us, but if you're ever going to find out what happened to your daughter, we're your best shot."

Dina shook her head. "You're just going to get your story and leave."

"The story we're going to get," Kimberly said, "is the story of what really happened. We're here to find the truth."

Dina stared down at the ground. "The truth doesn't matter here in Eastern Carousel. I've been trying to tell them that the Patchers were involved for years."

"Miss Cano has been harassing the Patcher family for the better part of a decade," Antoine said. “Every few months, we’re getting called out to arrest her for trespass.”

Kimberly nodded. "We don't plan to harass them," she said. "If they are involved somehow, we plan to make sure everyone knows."

Dina waited for a moment as if trying to think of a line. "What choice do I have?" she said. "It's either you or nobody, and I’ve tried nobody."