9
5. 6. 22, Monday, 14:29
To save yourselves, pull. Under. Push. Turn. Press. Face it.
The single sentence ran through all the seven’s mind like a drone hovering above a field. There was no danger of forgetting it, as they mentally repeated it like a chanting mantra, even with so many, many…things in the Combined Room.
The Room was a long glass corridor that seemed to have no end, with a transparent floor that showed off how high the Room was suspended. Not only that, freezing water was rising, gushing and rushing around, all the way up to their ankles and getting higher. Up on the ceiling, insects buzzed and spiders jumped. How they stuck the statues onto the walls was a mystery to everyone.
Emma was on the verge of hysteria. “Why did they have to take my spray can?! The BUGS ARE UP THERE! THEY’RE GOING TO COME DOWN ANYTIME! THANK GOODNESS THEY DON'T SEEM TO LIKE THE WATER!"
“HOW CAN YOU LIKE THE WATER?!” Denver bellowed back at her, shivering and attempting to jump out of the drink. “IT’S COLD. IT’S AWFUL.”
“WHERE ARE ALL OF YOU?” Lana screamed. She waded in the water, spinning around like a Blind Man’s Bluff player, blindfolded. “DON’T TELL ME SOMEONE DROWNED! WAIT, NO, DO TELL ME THAT. IS THAT MOSQUITOES I HEAR? HELP! WE’RE ALL GOING TO GET BITTEN AND CONTRACT DENGUE FEVER AND DIE! I HAVE TO CALL MY PARENTS! LAST TIME I CHECKED THEY WERE DRIVING! WHAT IF THEY HAD AN ACCIDENT?”
“THEY JUST HAD TO PUT THE STATUES HERE, DIDN’T THEY?!” Freddie hollered. “I SWEAR, THAT ONE BLINKED. EMMA, LANA, GET ME OUT OF HERE!”
“OH HECK, IS THAT A TARANTULA?”
“WHY ISN’T THERE ANY END TO THE CORRIDOR?!”
“THE FLOOR! HOW HIGH ARE WE?! WHAT IF IT BREAKS? WE’RE GONNA FALL TO OUR DEATH! I HATE HEIGHTS!”
Well, one could only scream for so long. So of course, after a ten-minute-or-so shouting match, the Phobia Club eventually stopped, out of breath and throats hoarser than an invalid’s.
“Okay, I guess we should stop yelling now,” Emma gasped.
“Great idea,” Freddie groaned. “I hate wet socks. They’re so squishy. I knew there was a reason I shouldn’t have worn them, but that stupid blister on my foot-”
“Shut it, Fred, no one wants to hear about your socks!” Lana shouted. “WE COULD SLIP AND FALL IN! I CAN FEEL IT! IT’S UNTIL MY KNEES!”
Denver yelped. “NO!”
“Someone stop them!” Emma cried, swatting at the inquisitive fly that had flown down. “EW! Did I just touch one?”
Julian swallowed hard, turning away from the unknown end of the dreaded glass corridor. Although, the other side wasn’t much better, what with approaching bugs, swelling sea and statues that he could’ve sworn blinked. “We should probably focus on getting out of here, but AAAAAH!!! I HATE THIS CORRIDOR!”
“To save yourselves, pull. Under. Push. Turn. Press. Face it,” Freddie said. “To save yourselves, pull. Under. Push. Turn. Press. Face it.”
Lana seemed to have calmed down a little. “Okay, ‘To save yourselves’ should mean how to stop everything…I think.”
“Then the rest should be instructions on what to do,” Adonis summarized, carefully, anxiously keeping track of the leaping spiders.
“But pull what?” Denver asked, scrabbling at the walls as if there were handholds there to climb unto. “Under what? Push what? Turn what? Press-”
“Okay, okay, we get it,” Emma cut him off. “Then we have to look for something.”
“I can’t help you there,” Lana sighed. “I feel so useless.”
“You’re not useless,” Freddie corrected. “HOLY SMOKES THE STATUE SCRATCHED ITS NOSE!”
“There!” Julian shouted. “There’s a lever or something beside that statue! The weird twisty one!”
Leo was closest. Moving as if he was in a swamp, he made his way slowly there. There was a tiny handle there, the same colour as the wall, only visible under brighter light. “Pull it down or push it up?”
“DOWN! HOW CAN YOU PUSH IT UP?!”
He pushed it down.
A glass cover suddenly slid out from nowhere, separating the buggy and spidery ceiling from them.
“Yes! Yes! YES!” Emma hooted. “No more bugs!”
“What next?” Adonis called out. “I think the instructions are supposed to help us remove all the phobias.”
“Under!” Freddie replied. “But what the heck does that mean?”
“Obviously, underwater,” Lana said quickly. “I just realized. One of us has to go under!”
“NO WAY IS THAT GOING TO BE ME!”
“Well then, b’bye,” Freddie said. And dove under before anyone said anything else.
The glass floor seemed terribly fragile, but Freddie ignore that. Half floating and sinking, she ran her hand around the tiles, searching for some hidden mechanism. ‘Push’ was the next word, so maybe she had to-
She pushed down on a tile. It flipped to the side, creating two rectangular holes for the water to flow away to. Freddie broke to the surface. “Two more instructions down.”
“The water’s draining!” Denver cheered.
“Where does it even go?” Julian wondered.
“The next word is ‘Turn’,” Emma said. “Find something!”
Every pair of eyes scanned the Room. What they were looking for, they didn’t know, but there had to be something that would help them. The instructions seemed to be working, so far.
“Hey, what’s that circle thing on the door?” Denver said, surprised.
“The door knob?” Lana said sarcastically.
“No, something else,” Adonis said, quickly walking there. There appeared to be a flat Lazy Susan on the door. He felt the sides and turned it.
The glass floor suddenly clouded and became opaque, blocking the unwanted high view.
“Two more to go!” Leo said happily.
“Press – find a button or something,” Julian suggested.
“Like this one?” his sister asked, standing by a statue of a glaring cat and pointing to a raised bump on its head. Julian liked cats, but he didn’t like this one. He was certain that he saw it flicking its tail.
“Press it!” Lana told her.
Emma slapped it. The statues, which everybody had clearly seen moving in some way, somehow froze. Freddie whooped.
“Last one, everyone,” Adonis said.
“’Face it’.”
Everyone’s phobias had been taken down. Bugs, water, spiders, statues, heights…oh wait, except the infinite corridor.
“It’s your turn, Julian,” Denver called. “We’re taking down yours now.”
“But how?” Emma said crossly. “What the heck is ‘Face it’ supposed to mean?”
“Face each other?” Freddie offered. “No, that sounds dumb. Uh, face something? Or something’s face?”
“What else has a face here other than us?” Lana retorted.
“Nope,” Leo interrupted. “I think we’ve got to face something. As in, confront it.”
Adonis turned to Julian. “I feel bad for you.”
“Why?”
“How thick are you?” Freddie grumbled. “You’re supposed to go down the corridor.”
“Oh…WAIT NO-”
“I know you’re having a mental breakdance now, but we’re so close,” Lana said. “C’mon, just walk down. We could’ve just done that earlier, I suppose, but I think the water would’ve drowned us all by then and all of us having panic attacks over it probably wouldn’t help. Instructions are ever helpful.”
Emma didn’t say anything. She just pushed her brother forward against his protests.
He didn’t like it one bit, how the corridor just seemed to stretch on however far he walked. No way was he ever coming here again. Not voluntarily, at any rate.
There’s no end to this, Julian thought. He looked behind. Everyone was watching him. Counting on him. Responsibility sucked.
Then it hit him. Why the corridor appeared to go on forever. Oh, why had it taken so long for him to figure it out?
Mirrors. Mirrors like a magician’s. Reflecting back.
He reached the end. Feeling along the edges of the mirrors, he thought he felt something. Julian pressed down hard on one panel.
The door swung open.
***
Time can never mend
The careless whispers of a good friend
To the heart and mind
Ignorance is kind
There’s no comfort in the truth-
Lana yanked out Emma’s ear buds. “Enough ‘Careless Whisper’ for you.”
“Give it back,” Emma grumbled, snatching it.
“What, did you come all the way to our room just to listen to music?” Adonis complained, still annoyed at Lana, Emma, Freddie, Denver and Leo barging in to his and Julian’s room after dinner earlier.
“No, but it wasn’t because we missed you either,” Denver said cheerfully.
“Haha, very funny.”
Julian looked up from playing video games. “Then why did you come here?”
“Because,” Emma said, plugging her ear buds back again. “Ashwood said there would be no shooting tomorrow, since he’s going out for something.”
“Boring,” Adonis said.
“Hey, did you guys ever wonder what happened to Leith?” Lana asked. “I mean, he’s hot” – Lana had always been a sucker for ‘hot men’ – “and that should be enough reason to find him, but it’s weird no one has seen him since his stepmom interrupted us.”
“Meh, he probably got grounded or something,” Freddie shrugged from the chair, putting her feet up on the table. “Personally-”
“Hey, what fell out of your pocket?” Leo asked, surprised.
“What?” Freddie looked down. Oh right, that piece of paper. “Just a piece of paper I think I dropped when I broke the vase. Don’t remember it though.”
She picked it up and opened it up. “Dude, it looks like someone’s shopping list…”
Emma glanced at her friend. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I didn’t write this. This is gibberish.”
Freddie spread it out on the table. Everyone’s interest piqued, they leaned over to see it from wherever they were sitting.
ɒidoʜqoɿɈinoT
ɒidoʜqoɔɒƆ
ɒidoʜqoɿɈoƨiƎ
ɒidoʜqiɔɘloɔƧ
ɒidoʜqoɈɒmoИ
ɒidoʜqoϱnγllI
“Y’know, it kind of looks like the diary we found,” Denver remarked to Leo.
“What diary?” Lana asked, narrowing her eyes at them.
Both of them looked each other. Shrugging, Denver related the whole story on how he and Leo found a gibberish diary in one of their drawers.
“Interesting…” Adonis mused. “Could you guys bring it over?”
Once they did, Leo flipped it to the first page. Pointing, he said, “see? Only the first page looks like that paper.”
“Maybe they were written by the same person?” Julian suggested.
“Actually,” Freddie said suddenly, looking up from flipping the pages. “I think the first page is the key to the code this book’s written in. You can see some real English letters if you squint hard enough.”
“Can you decode it?” Lana asked.
“If I had enough time, probably,” Freddie said. “Mind if I keep it?”
“Sure.”
“We don’t need it.”
“Hey,” Emma exclaimed. “I know how to read the paper!”
“What?” Julian spluttered.
Emma stabbed a finger at it. “It’s written backwards. Like Da Vinci code, or mirror language.”
“Quick, where’s your mirror?” Adonis urged.
Emma pulled it out and put it on its side. “Uh, could someone give me pen and paper?”
Lana passed her the pen in her hand and sketchbook.
Emma began to write down the following:
Illyngophobia
Nomatophobia
Scoleciphobia
Eisotrophobia
Cacophobia
Tonitrophobia
“Phobias…” Freddie said.
“This is getting exciting,” Julian muttered, leaning in closer.
“I think the writer just decided to write down a string of nonsense,” Denver complained.
“Well, there’s one way to find out,” Adonis decided. “Tomorrow’s a free day. We should probably check out those Rooms in the list."