Chapter Text
The door shut behind me with a dull thud.
I found myself outside. The Dollhouse was behind me, swallowed by the fog.
The playground was still buried in the nightmare. Only quieter, more dead. As if everything had sunk one step deeper into hell.
I walked. My legs were still trembling. I had no idea where I was going—but deep down, I knew.
The lights on the rides were off. The wind stirred the chains of the old swing. Beneath my feet, bones buried under layers of mud and snow.
Then, slowly, the first notes began to play.
I am colorblind…
Counting Crows, from somewhere. A hidden speaker, maybe long forgotten. Or maybe just inside my head.
Coffee black and egg white…
I passed through the park gate. I didn’t look back.
It was over.
No. It wasn’t over at all.
In the distance, rising through the pitch-black darkness, I saw the library.
I am ready, I am ready, I am ready I am…
I knew that there, in the dust and broken books, in the shadows between the shelves and the stench of mold and human skin—
she was waiting for me.
Beck.
—
Elsewhere, at that same moment, Agent Reyes was unscrewing the rusted cover of a hidden panel beneath the carousel’s mechanism.
He had followed the clues. The secrets left in diaries, in the symbols carved into the walls of buildings. The pieces were falling into place.
A click. A metallic sound.
Then the carousel stopped. And slowly, it began to descend.
Downward.
Toward the church.
Where the secrets lie. The cult. The sleeping God.
End of Part Two.