The Dead Game (7 page)

They quickly joined him in the search.

Mike knew that they had only a few precious seconds to spare before they were eaten alive by the wild animals. He could hear them breathing heavily, right behind him. He imagined their hot, heavy breath on the back of his neck, their sharp teeth glistening brightly, preparing to dig into his soft flesh. He closed his eyes in defeat.

“I found it!” screamed David as he pushed the lever that opened the door wide open. After they hurried through, the door slammed shut on the animals eager to rip them wide open.

They found themselves outside by the pool.

Chapter 9

W
ith great uncertainty and trepidation, the second group climbed the marble staircase. They were faced with two hallways, both waiting for them in total darkness. Insisting that they remain together as one group, Todd chose the hallway to the right for them. Refusing to follow Todd, Gregg stood his ground, claiming that their elusive host could be anywhere—even in the darkened rooms on the left side of the house. Todd responded that for safety they must stick together; Gregg responded in turn by becoming quiet and sullen.

Following the right hallway, they were about to approach a closed door.

Shana shivered, secretly wishing that she was anywhere else but here. The house was much too gloomy and quiet, giving off a deserted and threatening feeling. She was afraid that her strange forebodings about this evening were going to come true.

Todd and Linda stood at the door ready to open it when Shana suddenly spoke up. “Where did the others disappear to? Todd, I thought you had told Gregg to keep everyone close together in one group?”

Edging closer to Todd, Linda whispered, “Do you think that Gregg, Ryan, and Judy have something to do with this strange party?”

Not bothering to answer her question, Todd just opened the door and walked in, leaving Linda and Shana alone in the empty hallway.

Shana was annoyed. “What’s his problem? Does he think he’s too important to give us a straight answer?”

“I’m sure Todd is as much in the dark as we are…he is just trying to keep us safe.”

As Shana stalked through the doorway, she sharply responded over her shoulder, “I sure hope so.”

They entered a dark and musty-smelling living room. The room was softly lit by the orange glow radiating from the fire in the wide brick fireplace on the far wall. Two old, shabby couches faced one another in front of the fire. The only other furniture in the room consisted of two empty end tables. The wallpaper had a greenish color, and was peeling off in many spots.

As they quietly stood before the fire, the intense heat began spreading toward them. It felt much hotter than the heat coming from the fire alone, Shana bleakly thought—and that couldn’t mean anything good for them.

Spotting a dark substance dripping down the walls, she quickly grabbed hold of Todd’s arm while pointing. “Something is trickling down the walls!”

Todd walked over to the wall to the right of the fireplace. He touched the wall and then checked his finger. “It’s just blood,” he remarked.

“What do you mean ‘just blood’? How could that be unimportant? If there’s blood, then there could be dead bodies of animals…or even people!” cried out a frantic Shana. At times she couldn’t believe how callous and unaffected Todd could be about the people around him.

The flames began to sputter, shooting bright sparks of orange and yellow puffs of fire at them. As the flames grew taller and fuller, harrowing sounds began to echo from inside the fireplace. In horror, they watched as body parts dropped down from the chimney. They sizzled and burned in the intense flames, splattering blood across the fireplace walls. Severed arms and legs—even sliced-off fingers and toes—flew down the chimney. Bloody limbs flew out from the fireplace, landing at their feet on the dark- green carpet.

Shana felt like she was losing her mind. She had to get out of this place. Blood and body parts were flying around the room and no one was doing anything. They were all standing there like idiots—frozen in place. And what was happening to the others in the basement? Were they experiencing similar horrors? Were these body parts actually from their friends?

“Look! There’s a new door next to the fireplace! Come on! Hurry! Let’s use it to get out of here!” Grabbing hold of their hands, Todd safely pulled them out of the room.

“I didn’t see a door there a second ago! Did it just materialize, or am I going crazy? Is this a hallucination, or is this really happening to us?” Linda shrilled loudly.

“We’re all seeing and experiencing the same exact things,” responded Todd. “Someone is playing a cruel joke on us. Once we discover who that person is, I’ll personally make sure that he won’t be able to play tricks on anyone—ever again! But for now…let’s just finish this game to the end and then deal with the culprit once it’s over.”

Yeah, life should be so easy. Shana knew that this battle was never going to be finished. Whoever was doing this wasn’t going to give up so easily. Spirits or demons—or whoever was responsible—weren’t easily vanquished with water like the Wicked Witch in 
The Wizard of Oz.
Spirits who rose with vengeance in their hearts usually rose with carefully laid out plans that involved other spirits…with their own explosive baggage. She’d had too many bad experiences with spirits…and the witches who have awakened them for the wrong reasons. Too much was happening here to involve only one player, strongly pointing to a coven or a group with a very powerful leader.

Stepping into the next room, the first thing they heard was a loud dripping noise.

Terrified of finding more blood trickling down the walls, Linda walked in very slowly. Instead, she found a large swimming pool, built into the floor of the huge white-tiled room, with a pump that was emitting the constant dripping sound.

“This must be the indoor swimming pool with the fancy Jacuzzi,” she commented, gazing around at the massage tables and mud baths set up alongside the pool. Two doors at the far end of the room were labeled “sauna” and “steam room.” Thankfully, the walls were sparkling white and appeared to be clean of any blood.

“The water in the pool looks frozen,” she pointed out, moving closer to get a better look. She peered over the edge; only to find the pool frozen—not with water—but with blood, a lot of blood. She suddenly felt herself become lightheaded; her head began spinning. All she could manage was a small squeak as she scurried away.

Shana and Todd rushed over to her.

“How much blood could have been used to fill up this whole pool? Is it human or animal blood? Forget it, I really don’t care! I just want to get out of here! Our host has an extremely ghoulish sense of humor, and I don’t want to play his game anymore.” Linda hysterically shrieked as she rushed to the doorway that they’d just crossed through. The door was no longer there, but had been replaced with a solid wall. Sobbing, she ran her fingers along the surface. “Oh my God! Oh my God! This can’t be real! Where’s the stupid door?” She asked no one and everyone as she vainly searched for an opening.

“The script has already been written,” Todd solemnly replied. “We have no choice but to follow the predetermined path in order to find our way out. Quickly! Stay behind me! And don’t touch anything!” He pointed to the door that had just surfaced on the far wall between the doors to the “sauna” and “steam room,” and ordered, “We must exit through this new doorway and see where it leads us.”

They stepped into a drafty master bedroom, softly illuminated by lit candles encircling the huge canopied bed. The candlelight created shadows that swayed back and forth across the ceiling and walls. Fearing that the shadows were reaching out for her, Linda backed away in horror, not knowing if she was imagining them or not.

She didn’t want to move any closer to the bed, dreading what she might discover there. Anything was possible, from what they had already witnessed in this house. But Todd and Shana kept moving forward. Unhappily, she moved slowly in unison with them toward the bed. What she found there exceeded all her frightening expectations. On the white quilt lay a human skeleton with its arms resting peacefully at its sides.

All of a sudden the skeleton began to bleed, slowly at first, and then profusely from the deep gash in its bones from the long, serrated silver knife sticking out of its chest. In the stream of blood were worms—scores of worms—inching out from the deep hole, spreading across the white quilt. Linda couldn’t believe her eyes. She gasped. More and more worms were climbing out from the body, falling in groups from the bed to land on the carpet.

A new doorway emerged on the far side of the room. Watching the enormous worms spread across the floor, Linda realized that their squishy bodies were blocking their path to the door. They were circling her feet, trying to climb up her shoes. She frantically stomped her feet to dislodge the worms latching onto her heels.

Looking over her shoulder, she noticed Shana backing into a corner. Her eyes appeared huge and saucer-like as she stared at the worms crawling closer and closer to her. She wasn’t making a sound, but Linda could hear her shaking—as if her bones were rattling inside her quivering body.

Todd dragged them through the swarms of worms. Once they were outside the room, Linda gave a sigh of relief: the persistent worms were locked in the bedroom, behind the door that had concealed itself into the wall.

The next room turned out to be a huge library. Its four walls were lined with books, all the way up to the high, elaborately carved, domed ceiling.

Todd moved over to one wall of books, withdrawing one book at random. “The books are real in a fake house,” wondered Todd out loud. The book was 
Grimm’s Fairytales.
Pointing at the old book, Todd remarked, “A very appropriate book for this situation.”

Walking over to the desk, he commented drily, “Of course, no papers on the desk or in the drawers.”

Shana was unconsciously spinning a large globe standing on the floor beside the desk. When she finally glanced down at it, she was startled to see that the globe portrayed a world without land but only water. “The person running this show has a weird perception of reality. His world consists only of water without land or people. Maybe he wants to get rid of everyone and live on this mountain all by himself,” commented Shana wryly.

“Or maybe he wants to live on this whole planet by himself,” Linda remarked, adding to Shana’s myopic explanation for the reasoning behind the bogus party.

Glancing back at where they’d just entered the room, Shana noticed that the door wasn’t visible any longer. Then it suddenly appeared. It had resurfaced when Todd opened the door to the next room! “Hey look!” she cried out. “The first door to the room reappeared when you opened the second door!”

“Todd! What’s in the next room?” prompted Shana, hoping that they’d just found a way out of this awful nightmare.

Taking a quick look into the next room, Todd responded, “It’s the same living room. Obviously, these rooms form one big loop.”

“Please close the door and then open it again,” directed Shana as a new idea came to her.

He shut the second door, which simultaneously caused the first door to disappear into the wall, and when he reopened it, the first door reappeared. As soon as the first door reappeared, Shana hastily grabbed hold of it, holding it open for them. She hoped that by backtracking through the maze of rooms, they would find their way out.

They were in the master bedroom again with the bleeding skeleton. Dodging the squirming piles of worms, they repeated what they had done in the last room: opened the second door while holding the first door open. They continued this way through the room with the bloody swimming pool and the living room with its bloody walls, until they finally returned to the main staircase.

Racing down the staircase, Linda slowly came to the realization that she wasn’t getting any closer to the front door. The stairs had somehow dug a deep passageway into the floor, creating a long underground tunnel below the house. She stopped short in confusion, peering down the dark hole, where there was no light or any end in sight.

“Stop running! And turn around! Try crawling back to the beginning of the tunnel!” Todd shouted from behind her in the tunnel. Looking up at him, Linda began to crawl back up the slippery rocks of the tunnel’s jagged walls. Joining them, they climbed up each rock by sharp rock.

Almost at the top, they were hit by a strong wind blowing in from the entrance. Their hold weakening on the slippery walls, they plummeted deeper into the dark abyss. Creatures reached out for them from within the walls, their empty eye sockets leering at them mockingly, their elongated mouths held wide forever open in a soundless cry. Long arms stretched out to them, waiting to catch the terrified victims as they fell to their death.

Horrified by the deformed creatures, Linda slipped and lost her hold on the slimy rocks. She began to free fall through space…down into the nether reaches of End House. Flashing through her mind were disturbing images of the creatures living beneath the house. Were they somehow related to the creatures that drifted through town? Would she become one of them once she reached the bottom of the tunnel? Was there even a bottom to the tunnel? Would she continue falling forever? How…? Todd’s booming voice abruptly interrupted her wild jumble of thoughts.

Into the deep unyielding silence, Todd had boldly yelled out, “Stop!” Obeying his order, the tunnel transformed itself back into stairs with the evil creatures retreating to wherever they’d come from.

They were standing once again on top of the sweeping staircase.

This time they made it down safely.

Linda frantically pulled on the front door, but it wouldn’t budge. 
Nothing can ever be easy,
she moaned to herself. Todd shouted, “Open!” and the door magically obeyed, automatically swinging open. Turning her back on Todd, she was ready to leave this awful house. She didn’t want to see him…talk to him…or even ask him any of the questions that were rapidly firing through her brain. She had to finally accept the fact that he wasn’t who she’d thought he was: he had hidden powers, and maybe even a hidden agenda, which placed his honesty and his trust into question.

She knew that Todd was staring at her, behind her back, but she refused to face him. She was extremely angry that he’d kept important information from her. Who knew what else he had hidden? Maybe he was more involved in this than she’d earlier assumed. And who was running this sinister game? Was it orchestrated by humans, or by some unknown creatures? The dark shadows stalking her in town didn’t appear to be human. Were Todd and Sam involved with these creatures? And if Todd had powers, did that mean he wasn’t even human?