The Game at Carousel: A Horror Movie LitRPG

Trailer #1

The first trailer opened in black and white as the camera showed a large building with stone columns and a giant banner hung across its face that read

Carousel Museum of Natural History

Join Us for a Limited Time Exhibit:

Unraveling the Secrets of the Sands!

Guests arrived wearing tuxes and dresses. Among them, intercut in flashes, were Roxy, Grace, and Lara, as well as the other players they had brought with them distributed throughout several different flashes of the crowd. They were all dressed for the event, but I could tell they were distressed.

Inside a large showroom, a woman stood in front of a podium and said, “Welcome to the first in a series of exhibits that the Carousel Museum of Natural History will be hosting about ancient cultures from around the world. This year’s exhibit will be an exciting opportunity. We have in our collection the contents of the tomb of the lost pharaoh, Setemkara!”

The crowd clapped and cheered. A red curtain in the center of the room was raised to reveal an ornate sarcophagus.

The camera cut to a man in a fedora whispering to Grace with a smile, “Who did they have to bribe to get ahold of that?”

“It was supposed to be donated from a collector,” Grace replied.

The woman at the podium continued, “We stand here tonight on the very anniversary of King Setemkara’s discovery fifty years ago. We are proud to be the first host of these artifacts in a public exhibit in their entire history. We hope to send the message that history truly belongs to everyone.”

The party went on and people drank and celebrated the exhibit. Suddenly, the lights went out. The entire room went completely dark. There was a loud sound of stone scraping against stone.

When the lights came back on, the sarcophagus was open. There was nothing inside.

Cut to a scene where Grace explained, “King Setemkara was paranoid that someone would exhume his body and use it in a ritual to condemn him in the afterlife. These scrolls indicate that he had a trap built. It doesn’t explain what the trap was, only that it would ensure anyone who disturbed his rest would be punished. But it’s clear it wasn’t a simple booby trap.”

“Then what did it do?” Roxy asked.

“Ladies,” Lara said, shining a flashlight down a dark hallway with an exit sign hanging from the ceiling. At the end of the hallway, there was no exit, only a passage made of stone. Hieroglyphics adorned the walls.

“This isn’t just the museum anymore,” Lara continued, “We’re inside his tomb.”

Cut to scenes of well-dressed people running from something down a museum hallway that transitioned into another ancient corridor. Someone stepped on a stone that they shouldn’t have and the door behind them closed. Sand started to pour down from the ceiling.

“We have to find our way out of the tomb!” Roxy screamed. “We can’t kill it. We have to run.”

She was afraid. Roxy had been a good actress, but I thought her fear looked real.

“The museum has changed,” the man in the fedora said in a panic, “He’s filled it with traps of all kinds. A labyrinth with no way out.”

The familiar narrator’s voice came on over the loudspeaker, “Maybe history doesn’t belong to everyone.”

There was a flash of a figure standing in a doorway. They were only visible as a silhouette, but it was clear that the figure was wrapped in bandages from head to toe. An ornamental crown could be seen on its head.

The screen cut to black. The words “Whispers of Sand” appeared on the screen, but were soon blown away by the wind.

The narrator came back to say, “Coming soon.”

~

Grace, Roxy, and Lara were doomed if Project Rewind was set up correctly.

~

Trailer #2

The scene opened with hundreds of people pushing shopping carts through the aisles of a large warehouse. I recognized it immediately as Eternal Savers Club. That was the store where we got all of our food.

“Look I'm going to need you to come in next Monday. I know it's a holiday and I know I said that you could take it off but we really need you. And you do know that evaluations are just around the corner and this would look really good for you,” a man wearing a red shirt and a tie said to one of the employees wearing an Eternal Savers Club vest with a small circle that had the letters ESC on it.

The employee he was talking to looked completely dead in the face. No emotion at all. He stood up from the chair he was sitting in and walked over to a desk that had a bunch of security monitors on it as well as a microphone.

He reached down, picked up the microphone, and said, “We have a code crimson in the manager's office. A code crimson.”

The man, apparently the manager, said “What are you talking about? There's no crimson on the chart.”

Moments later, several more employees showed up. Their faces were emotionless.

“What are you doing?” The manager asked. Then, the screen cut away and there was a loud scream.

The screen cut to one of the players I recognized but whose name I didn't recall. “Look kids,” she said. “This move is going to be good for us. I finally get the promotion I've been working to get for years.”

“At a grocery store,” a young man said. He was another player.

“Eternal Savers Club is more than just a grocery store. You should know, I just got both of you jobs there,” the woman said.

The young man was sitting next to a young woman and exclaimed, “What?”

This story definitely had horror-comedy vibes to it.

Cut to a scene of the young man, presumably the son in the family, mopping up a floor inside Eternal Savers Club. Underneath one of the shelving units, he found a wallet. He pulled out an employee ID card that showed the wallet belonged to the slain manager.

“What did they say happened to the old manager?” The son asked his mother somewhere off-screen.

“He retired. That's what it says in the system,” the woman said.

The young man mumbled to himself in a different scene, “he was only 45 how could he have retired?”

Cut to another scene inside Eternal Savers Club where the young man is restocking the shelves during the night and sees a group of cloaked figures walking to the store room. He follows them but when he gets there they're nowhere to be found.

There was then a montage of characters running. The brother and sister characters were in a cage next to what looked like some sort of demonic altar.

The player portraying the sister was panicking and said, “This isn't supposed to be here!”

The one playing her brother said quickly, “Well yeah, devil worship paraphernalia is supposed to be on aisle 6.”

The trailer moved on to show a few action scenes that were hard to discern followed by a scene of a cloaked figure wielding a knife. He moved the knife downward and then there was a demonic laugh.

A demonic voice said, “More. I need to consume more.”

A bit heavy-handed with the symbolism.

“What's happening?” The mother character asked in a panic to some other players in a scene. They all looked genuinely confused. Maybe it was just because I had never seen this particular storyline before but it seemed like they were genuinely perplexed by something. It was possible that that was just a necessary scene but still, there was something off about it to me. “Ritual sacrifice. Demons. I didn't read anything about that in the... manual.”

The way she said “manual” sounded unnatural and forced like she was not actually talking about the employee manual. It struck me that she must have been talking about the Carousel Atlas.

Or it was all just a joke because the movie was some sort of black comedy.

The screen cut to black.

The Eternal Savers Club

The narrator’s voice came back, “Coming to a theater near you!”

~

I didn't know much about the Eternal Savers Club storyline, but the players looked like they had been surprised by something.

~

Trailer #3

The next trailer started and instantly my blood ran cold.

I recognized the image in front of me.

I was looking at Camp Dyer.

The familiar children NPCs were playing kids' games out in a field next to the lodge.

“Is it true what they say about this place?” One of the campers asked a shell-shocked Valorie. “That a girl died here?”

Valorie paused for a moment but then tried to regain her composure.

“Yes,” she said. “But that was a long time ago. And it was a terrible accident. You have nothing to worry about.”

There were more scenes intercut of the campers and the lake.

“We came here to do what we have to do,” a male NPC said. I recognized him. He was a camp counselor who slept in one of the cabins to watch the children. “There's no going back. We don't have any time.”

I couldn't see who he was talking to.

I could hear the campers singing their little rhyme:

“Suzy Snyder, six foot five,

Haunts Camp Dyer, still alive.”

That rhyme faded quickly as a little girl was seen walking away from the abandoned cabin.

She walked up to Arthur as he lay back in a reclining beach chair in the shade.

“Mr. Arthur,” the little girl said, “I found this in that cabin over there. Am I allowed to have it?”

She reached out and dropped a large plastic locket into Arthur’s lap. The locket opened.

It started to play a song that sounded like a 90s teen idol was singing, but the locket was low on batteries so the song came out all deep and stretched out:

“Girl, I can’t say no to summer with you,

And I think that you are feeling it too,”

Arthur’s eyes got large, and he screamed, “What the hell is this? Why?”

Cut to a scene of players being chased by an unseen figure. There were so many players. More than I had ever heard of in a story all at once. More than I thought was possible.

The music from the locket continued:

"As the seasons change, one thing will always be true,

That I’ll never say no to summer, to summer with you."

The camera cut to a large, pale hand shoving a piece of rebar down on an unseen target. Then, I saw Chris’ face of surprise, the apparent victim.

The last frame before the title card was of an imposing figure walking out of the water. They were difficult to see, but it was clear that they had long hair and a jacket so large it was too big even on their hulking frame. Their legs and feet were bare. Something was weird about their face, but I couldn’t tell what because it was in shadow.

The title card appeared.

Say No To Summer

“Coming soon.”

~

“What's going on?” Kimberly asked.

I looked at Antoine and then at Kimberly.

“Camp Dyer,” I said. “The storyline at Camp Dyer was triggered. It got everyone.”

“No,” Antoine said. He realized the implication immediately. “How strong is that storyline? Do you know?

“I have no idea,” I said. “Grace’s team and the team that went on a grocery run were also in storylines that looked strong.”

I took time to explain all of the trailers I had just seen. We stood there in the middle of the strange woods silently contemplating the meaning of all of this.

Project Rewind required that they all be wiped out. Every single one of them.

We were alone.

We were all jarred as a voice started to cackle right next to us. Silas started delivering a rhyme. It reminded me of the one we heard when we first got to Carousel, with some notable differences.

Welcome to Carousel, the town where movies come to life.

Will you rise to the occasion or fall to the knife?

The film’s about to start, and you're in the front row!

The audience is watching you, so give them a show.

You had better be willing to do what it takes,

Because even as I’m speaking, Carousel wakes.

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