12
8. 6. 22, Tuesday, 00:17
They say those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it.
The Phobia Club definitely remember history, and were doomed to repeat it.
They stole a card again at dinner.
Stealing it was easy. Sneaking out of their rooms without waking Alex and Ben were also easy. Going to the hall of Rooms was also easy. Opening the door was easy. Avoiding security cameras was easy.
What was not easy was looking for keyholes.
A cloudy moon outside trickled river-style into the Room, which was rather similar to Emma’s: a terribly unappealing sitting room, complete with chandelier, wooden chairs, tiny table and shelves full of glass cages, most likely to put the bugs in. The Room was already dark what with its murky green, smoky grey and pitch black shades, so the night made it darker. The only lights were from seven flashlights and reflective surfaces mimicking fly eyes.
“There’s nothing here,” Emma called softly, from her corner. Thank goodness the bugs had been taken out. She had sprayed copious amounts of repellent anyway though.
“Neither here,” Julian said. “This place looks bigger than in daylight…”
“It’s too bloody dark to see anything,” Adonis cussed. “Anyone who sees the light be damned. Just turn it on.”
“You have,” Denver said. “A flashlight. Nothing here too.”
“Nope,” Leo muttered, swinging his flashlight along the wall.
Lana pulled her jacket higher up. “C’mon, we can’t give up now!”
“Nothing here, there or everywhere,” Freddie said. “I think we’re allowed to give up. Anymore time spent here I’m going blind.”
“Ugh!” Emma plopped down. “Not another false trail!”
“Emma, you should probably not sit down here – who knows if they sanitize it after the bugs all crawl around?!”
Emma hastily got up.
“I think they do clean it up,” Adonis said dryly. “Saw one of the help carrying a spray bottle coming out of here.”
“That explains why it smells like Clorox here. Ew.”
Lana was the only one still searching now. The rest had already given up, yawning or manically-wide-eyed, flopping against or on the chairs. Even she gave up after giving the Room one last once-over.
“Let’s just head back to bed,” Denver said.
“We can put the card on the floor outside someone’s room like they dropped it,” Freddie said, leaning on Lana as Emma leaned on her.
“This Trail never led anywhere,” Julian said. “Stupid.”
“Yeah, didn’t really lead anywhere after all, I guess,” Lana said. “Ugh, I’m tired. I think I’m hallucinating those holes at this point – HOLES!” She shrieked.
Jumping to her feet and letting Freddie and Emma fall like dominoes, Lana darted to the shelf. She grasped at the edges of a glass cage and yanked at it hard, not caring that everyone was leaning away from her and staring. “Get the heck out, you stupid thing!”
She whipped her head around. “Are you guys going to help me or what?”
“It would be helpful to know what exactly you’re doing.”
“Can’t you see it? It’s right there! THERE!”
“What exactly is there?!”
“THE KEYHOLES!”
And so without further ado the Phobia Club slipped flattened fingers into the small gap between the cage and the large shelf cubby.
It was as difficult as wining something at the hoop-throwing stall at a fair trying to get a hold of a cage so perfectly fitting the cubby, especially when there were no grooves or anything to properly grasp onto. Their fingers made blurry, funny tracks in the previously stained material, also making annoying squeaking noises. With a lot of grunting and ‘get-off-me’ the seven finally pulled out the cage, albeit quite noisily.
“There,” Lana said breathlessly. She flashed her torch at the inside of the shelf. “It’s small, but with proper light you can see it.”
At the back of the shelf cubby, oh so miniscule, perfectly arranged in a line at the right…were six holes.
“Someone get the keys,” Freddie exclaimed. “Make it quick, slowpokes!”
In the excitement all of them patted and rummaged through their pockets, each forgetting who had the keys. In a flurry of flapping jackets, tossed out items and grabbing, Leo found the set of keys. Hurriedly he stuck his hand in, everyone shining blinding lights at it, fumbling to choose a key.
“Doesn’t fit!” Leo worried.
“The sixth one,” Emma barked out tersely.
He slotted it in.
What a satisfying click…
“Next hole,” Adonis ordered. “Hurry up – you a bloody tortoise?”
“I think that’s supposed to be a turtle,” Freddie said helpfully.
Sliding the sixth key out of the ring, Leo poked in the rest one by one into the second keyhole. The fourth one produced another audible click. Then the first, then the fifth, then the third, then the second…
The entire back of the shelf cubby swung open like a door, revealing an endless black void into the unknown.
“Are…we supposed to crawl in?” Julian asked nervously. That wasn’t a hallway and he wasn’t claustrophobic, but that didn’t mean it appeared particularly pleasant.
“I guess,” Freddie muttered. “It is big enough if we crawl in.”
“I’m not going in first!” Emma immediately declared insistently. “HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN THERE THE AMOUNT OF BUGS AND SPIDERS-”
“Don’t be stupid, why would there be SPIDERS?” Adonis said, a little louder than necessary.
“Oh, they’ll be thousands there,” Denver said nonchalantly.
Lana looked like she was beginning to regret finding it. “We’ll just have to go in, like it or not.”
“And who’ll go first?”
“Not me.”
“Definitely not me.”
“I would go in if not for the damned arachnids.”
“He should go in.”
“Yeah, Makylov should.”
“We’re drawing lots, idiots,” Lana sighed.
***
Thankfully the crawling space widened out gradually, or all of them would’ve been stuck in the pose of a cat arching its back.
“Move faster, Denver,” Emma called from the back. Her voice echoed softly when it reached her brother in the front.
“I hate drawing lots,” Denver complained, his hand cramping from holding the flashlight for so long.
“Speak for yourself,” Adonis grunted. “I’m just glad I’m not in front. Even with the webs in my hair.”
“Can we change?”
“One more dumb question like that,” Freddie yelled, her voice muffled. “I will change you, Denver Whatever-Your-Middle-Name-Is Stein, and not for the better.”
“It was a joke…”
“I have this thing called an inability to tolerate stupidity.”
Lana stifled her laugh. “We all do. Did I ever tell you guys about that time this boy from another class…oh wait I already told you that one.”
“My legs are sore,” Julian grumbled. They had gone from crawling to creeping like hunchbacks now; the narrow space’s ceiling had gotten taller, but not much.
“My ears are too,” Emma snapped. “Shut up.”
Leo exhaled slowly, trying not to breathe dust. “Is it coming to an end yet?”
Suddenly the space widened out like a funnel, finally letting them stand up properly. It veered sharply to the right, a twisty turn. The walls were just as rough and dusty, if not even more so. Two lizards scuttled past them and Emma squealed-screamed.
“Yeah,” Denver said, relief apparent in his voice.
“Argh,” Lana moaned. “My back! I liked cracks, but I don’t like this!”
“My knees…”
“Ow, ow, ow.”
“OH MY GOSH IS THAT LIZARD POOP ON MY SHIRT?”
In various strange positions, the seven stretched and cracked their limbs, groaning from the squat-like way they had been forced to adopt. You didn’t know pain until you’ve done what they did.
“Where are we?” Julian asked. “Creepy old secret hallways, secret entrance. What else is Ashwood Mansion hiding, huh?”
“Ventilation systems,” Freddie said, head lifting up from her giraffe-drinking-water stretches. “Buncha old houses got ‘em. If this is a system, I’m betting all my books that it goes around the entire house.”
“And now, we’re going to explore it then,” Lana declared. “At least there aren’t any cameras watching us.”
And she set off in the lead, following the only path, the rest trailing behind her.
After a long time of walking, the exhausted Phobia Club had arrived at a junction: one way going sharply to the left, one straight on front and the other sharply to the right. Where should they go now was the big question.
“It just had to split into three, didn’t it?” Lana whirled around to face her friends. “Now what? Anyone know where those ways lead?”
“No,” Freddie said, munching on an energy bar no one wanted. “I didn’t memorize the house plan, sorry, and I wasn’t really paying much attention to where we were going.”
“It was so much easier when we could only follow one way,” Denver said.
After a long time of walking, the exhausted Phobia Club had arrived at a junction: one way going sharply to the left, one straight on front and the other sharply to the right. Where should they go now was the big question.
“We could split up,” Adonis suggested.
“ARE YOU KIDDING ME? THAT’S HOW PEOPLE DIE IN HORROR MOVIES!”
“Logically speaking that isn’t a good idea as we could get lost.”
“What, we won’t get lost if we stick together?”
“No, but if we stick together we won’t have to worry about finding the other group. And the horror movie thing. No one wants to kick the bucket yet.”
“Also I just realized there’s a plaque on the floor,” Emma interrupted. Everyone looked down like nervous people noticing how shiny their shoes are.
MAKE YOUR CHOICE, BUT COME BACK TO SQUARE ONE TO START OVER
“Sounds like a video game thing,” Julian said.
“Basically it’s pretty obvious that we have to choose go left or right…”
“Square One probably means back to where we were before, which I’m assuming is here, unless it isn’t figurative.”
“Start over? As in, we’re going to fail?”
Adonis scratched his neck. “We’re supposed to make a damned choice, left or right or straight on, then come back here, I’m guessing. Start over might imply we’re not going to find something in one of them, or it might just mean we have to look for clues again here like how the words in the previous clue told us to look back.”
“Reasonable-” Freddie clapped a hand to her forehead. “Dang, I forgot! I finished translating the diary – it really does belong to an ex-contestant…and I think that he or she also found this Trail.”
“Really?”
“Do you think it can help us?”
“Yeah, but I forgot to bring it. Dang it. I didn’t think we needed it.”
“Let’s just get moving,” Denver said impatiently. “Are we splitting up or what?”
“I hate to admit it, but probably yes,” Lana admitted. “Emma, Freddie and I will take the left one, Julian and Adonis the right one and Denver and Leo the one in front. Please text in the group chat every five minutes, and meet back here after twenty to thirty. Oh, and drink water!”
Lana was getting another concern about the amount of eye rolling the rest were doing now, but they nodded at each other grimly anyway. Until a spider scrambled past Adonis’s foot and he morphed into an enraged bull that sent them hurrying into their respective tunnels.
***
Every sound they made in was amplified by a dozen decibels. Lana’s rapid texting to everyone, Emma’s spray cans hissing, their footsteps, their breathing, Freddie’s loud enough chewing of a bunch of nuts held together by solid yogurt – that is to say, a granola bar.
They talked, of course, but mostly because it was too eerie to walk in silence and it was boring. They texted and surfed the internet a little, of course, but then one had to conserver mobile data since there was no internet connections in a corridor that didn’t exist. They discussed the Trail, of course, but it just led to senseless theories that wound up in a conversation about whether aliens had yam baskets, so they quit.
Like how they had to quit walking…
“It’s a dead end,” Emma said, surprised. She shined her flashlight at it up and down, but there was debate about it. A brick wall was a brick wall. And a brick wall couldn’t be pushed down.
“No way man. It’s definitely a secret spinning door to another corridor,” Freddie said hopefully, pressing her scraped palms on it. When it refused to budge she banged a fist on it, frustrated. “You’re right. It’s a dead end.”
“Ugh!” Lana sat down. “This is probably what it meant by ‘back to Square One’.”
“No! I refuse, I refuse, I refuse!” Freddie fumed. “I didn’t crawl through such a cramped space just to come to this, this non-budging wall! I didn’t get bugs down my shirt to end up here! There must be something in this passage AND I WILL FIND IT!”
At the last part she slapped her palm on the wall.
At the last part the brick slid open.
“…oh.”
“You really are a genius,” Emma said delightedly.
“But I just threw a tantrum-”
“A childish genius, but a genius.”
Lana shushed Freddie’s half-formed protests, reaching in to the dusty musty space. Groping around, her fingers closed around a cold metal thing, as cold as Freddie’s hands in a room with the air conditioner.
Emma gasped when Lana pulled it out. “Another key? Wow, this person must’ve really loved locks.”
Lana laughed as she slotted in the key to the empty key ring. “One more to add to the collection, I guess.”
“Yay.”
***
“There’s no bloody Internet here,” Adonis said angrily, re-enacting Rafiki with Simba from the Lion King. “The girls texted something in the group chat, and I can’t find out what.”
“They probably found something,” Julian said. “Or maybe one of them got injured. Or maybe Emma is just having a meltdown over bugs.”
The passage they were in was as rough as the others, sharp bricks lining the narrow walls and uneven, dusty tiles on the floor. Cobwebs dangled and swung from corners and the ceiling, but there was no sign of their creators, saving Adonis from jumping into assassin mode. Julian’s flashlight illuminated the nothingness in front – they were saving Adonis’s in the unfortunate event that Julian’s ran out of battery.
Whap.
Julian stopped in his tracks. “There’s a door here.”
“Then open it!”
“I can’t!”
“Kick it! Call yourself a man?”
“Ow, my foot.”
Adonis barged past Julian and banged the door with his shoulder. It shuddered and its hinges shrieked, but like that impossibly difficult sealed plastic packaging, it wouldn’t open. Then Adonis spotted the barrel bolt, so rusted with age that it had already transformed into a different colour.
“There’s a bolt here,” he said. Grasping his fingers around it, he tried to tug it out, but how unfortunate that the rust had glued it to its strike. Cursing at it with words that really should not be printed out, he tried to push it out from the other side but only succeeded in nearly cutting his finger.
“Let me try,” Julian said and grabbed hold of the barrel’s handle. He tried to yank it out but it stubbornly stayed in place, a cat not wanting to get off its owner’s laptop. Adonis watched disappointedly.
“I’ll go get the others,” Adonis told Julian, jabbing a finger at the latch. “Try and open it.”
“Wait, you’re going to LEAVE ME ALONE HERE?” Julian shouted as Adonis ran back the way they had come.
“Don’t worry, pretty sure there aren’t any monsters here!” Adonis called back cheerfully. “Watch out for bats though!”
“ADONIS! GET BACK HERE!”
“ADONIS!”
“MAKYLOV I WILL KILL YOU!”
***
“Ugh, not another ant up my leg,” Denver said, bending over to flick away the trespasser. “It’s not a red one, thankfully.”
“I think there’s one on my toe,” Leo said. “But I’m not sure if its dead, because I think I just stepped on it.”
“Gross.”
“Oh wait, it’s not. I think it’s biting me?”
“Meh, just pull it out and throw it down.”
The passage the duo had chosen was infested with ants coming from a crack in the wall. Not they minded – it was only annoying when the ants decided to investigate them.
“This thing seems to go on forever,” Denver said, in the lead.
“Do you know what time it is?” Leo asked.
“Nah, don’t have a watch.”
“Seriously, what do ants like about my foot?”
“I think we’ve been walking for like almost ten minutes already. That’s the number of ants that crawled on me, funny enough.”
“Where do you think this passage leads to?”
“No idea but – oh, dead end.”
The duo came to an abrupt stop in front of the bricked-up end. A lizard raced away once Denver shined his flashlight at it. “What now?”
“Find something? Go back?” Leo suggested.
“Find something like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe like an arrow or something.”
Leo switched on his flashlight and joined Denver in an intense scrutinization of the wall. Both of them hunted high and low for something, anything that would prove that their journey here was not a waste of time, time that they could have used to sleep. The adrenaline rush was long over – they didn’t know it but everyone was also yawning along.
“Found something,” Denver said suddenly. “Ashwood family crest?”
He rubbed hard at the brick. Dust and bits of rubble fell off, revealing the carved, cracked and faded version of the Ashwood family crest. Denver pressed it hard.
“One more key?”
***
When the seven met again in the original passage, all dusty and so sleep deprived that not even a double espresso shot could save them, they unceremoniously decided to explore Adonis and Julian’s passage way tomorrow.
If the circumstances provided it, of course, they had all said.
Oh, but the circumstances were already so providing.
Providing enough that everyone was blind to it.