"If you’re reading this, it’s already started. Don’t trust the carnival. And whatever you do—don’t go down the Slide of Mirrors on August 17th."
"You opened it early," the man said. His voice echoed like a tunnel. "I buried that box when I was twelve. The carnival comes every year on August 17th. It takes one of us. I tried to warn you—but you're me. And I never listen." joey 1997
And there, sitting on a bench, was the boy from the Polaroid. Older now, maybe thirty, with tired eyes and the same cowlick. "If you’re reading this, it’s already started
The next morning, the carnival was gone. Under the sycamore tree, a fresh patch of dirt. And in a little boy's bedroom across town, another Joey woke up with a strange feeling, a scar on his palm he didn't remember getting, and a whisper in his ear: His voice echoed like a tunnel
The carnival music swelled. The mirrors flickered. And Joey—1997—felt himself folding backward through time, becoming the boy in the photograph, the writer of the letter, the ghost at the bottom of the slide.
At the top, the slide twisted into darkness. Joey hesitated, then let go.
He pried it open with a tire iron. Inside: a cracked Polaroid of a boy who looked exactly like him—same cowlick, same gap-toothed grin—but wearing baggy jeans and a Spawn T-shirt. Beneath the photo, a handwritten letter: