The street lights suddenly shut off while I was walking down the street, leaving only moonlight to light up the road in front of me. I stared at the beautiful sky as I walked down the street towards my friend’s house, finally finding time to have a sleepover.
It was the end of summer, the eighteenth of August. The ideal time to do anything, as the heat had already somewhat died down while I still had a lot of free time.
I took my phone out of my pocket to see what the time was, but before I could even look at the screen, I got a call from my mother. Good timing, I forgot that I had disabled my ringtone.
“Honey, Adam, are you there?” she seemed very nervous.
“Yeah, is everything alright?”
“No, you need to hurry home right now!” I could feel the stress from her voice.
“What’s going on?” I tried to figure out why she called me, but she immediately hung up.
I was reasonably worried, so I turned back and started running home and as I picked up the pace, I had a constant feeling that something was very off.
To begin, the traffic quickly became less and less dense. I never expected a lot of traffic in the late evening hours, yet I started feeling like I was in a ghost town.
I also started hearing loud sounds. Sounds of vehicles, music, people chatting. Nothing like that was around me, but the sounds kept getting louder and louder, even their frequency was increasing and giving me a headache.
I tried to run faster, but the feeling that the sounds were giving me stopped me from that. It was like I was having my energy drained. What the hell is happening to me? I have to get home as soon as possible!
My vision started becoming blurry and became worse with every step until I couldn't even see what was in front of me, and when I felt it wasn't safe to keep walking, I stopped in my tracks and tried to clear up my vision. The colors in front of me changed from the gray color of the road and purple of the sky to a weird shade of yellow, then to brown and then switching between them for a short amount of time until it became ocher.
Eventually, my vision cleared up and I found myself lying in a bed inside a room that wasn't mine.
Where am I? What’s going on? I quickly jumped up. I was lying in a bed with no idea how I got to it. Was that a dream? Did I faint? I was confused and the looks of the room were completely unfamiliar .The walls, floor, carpet, ceiling, nightstand, closet and two doors were an ocher color. Only one thing stuck out. A single window, opposite of the door. On the other side of it, everything was gray with a slight black light covering the bottom. It wasn’t anything plastered on the window, it was something outside.
Slowly moving away from the window, I approached the door.
Locked.
My panic skyrocketed, but I had to try the other door too. This time, I managed to open it with ease, except what waited for me wasn’t an exit, an explanation, or even a friendly face. It was no more than a normal bathroom with ocher tiles.
Instinctively I went to the tap to wash my face.
As the cold water properly woke me up I tried remembering how I got here, looking at my reflection in the mirror, seeing the mess that was my hair, seeing my tired eyes and my stained shirt that I forgot to change before leaving the house.
It was useless, I couldn’t remember anything that came after those weird sounds.
When I turned off the tap, I heard knocks on the locked door. At first they were weak and quiet, though they kept getting louder with each knock. I just stood frozen in the bathroom, staring at my colorless eyes in the mirror, hoping that whoever was knocking wouldn’t get in. After a bit, the knocking got quieter again and then completely stopped, but silence didn’t set in. Instead, coming from the other side of that door I could hear a female voice.
“Ugh, fine, you can stay there a little longer, however be sure to come out and meet your new friends soon.”
About a minute passed after I heard that voice before I finally decided to leave the bathroom.
This time the other door was unlocked. Weird, I never heard any noises that would indicate the door was unlocked. Maybe it was stuck? I slowly went outside the room toward a small empty ocher corridor. Looking around the hallway I could see four doors, two on each side. There were dirty nameplates above every door.
Adam.
Alex.
Petra.
Rose.
Other than the doors, there was a small staircase at one end of the hallway, only wide enough for one person to pass. I wanted to check all the rooms before heading down, but all of them were locked, so I had no other choice.
What waited for me downstairs was a large open area with some seemingly random things placed inside it. On one side was a short bookshelf with an old fashioned radio on it and near the corner opposite of me on the same wall was a vending machine. On the other side was a long comfortable looking sofa and a coffee table in front of it. There were also two people in the room, a girl with a brown coat sitting on the sofa, with a happy, calm expression and a guy with curly black hair and a denim jacket who looked like he was checking out the vending machine, confused and frustrated at the same time.
I wasn’t sure if I should approach either of them, but the girl stood up from her sofa and waved at me.
“Hey, come here!”
Reluctantly, I approached her and sat on the sofa next to the spot she was sitting in.
As she sat back down, I took a closer look at her. She had long wavy black hair that reached her waist and looked like she played some sort of sport because, just from seeing her up close, I knew she could snap my body in half without breaking a sweat.
After she sat down she started the conversation. I could barely start them in normal situations so hearing her talk in her voice full of energy in a place like this helped me calm down a bit.
“Are you Adam?”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“The guy currently messing with the vending machine told me he was Alex, and between Adam and Rose, it was pretty easy to figure out.”
“So, you’re Petra?”
“Yup, that’s me.”
“Well, Petra, do you know anything about this building or the situation we’re in? You seem really chill about the situation so I figured you know something that could put us at ease.”
“Oh, sorry for giving off that feeling, although I’m as clueless as everyone, I just always try to be cheerful. It's a part of me.”
Before I got the opportunity to say something back, Alex stopped messing with the vending machine, took off his jacket and sat on the sofa, right next to me.
“What were you two talking about?” Alex asked as he jumped into the conversation.
Sooner than I was able to give an answer, Petra hastily answered.
“Nothing specific, we were only now meeting each other, barely even had time to greet each other.”
“Oh, I almost forgot that I haven’t met Adam yet.”
He reached his hand out and we shook hands.
“Alex.”
“Adam.”
“Let's cut to the chase. Do you remember how you got here, or even what this place is? Petra and I are completely lost, I don’t know what to do. Please tell me that you have some sort of clue at least!”
I avoided looking him in the eyes because I didn’t have an answer and was equally worried. The despair in his voice didn’t help me either, but before I could gather my strength to say anything, I was interrupted by the sound of footsteps coming from the staircase.
Down came a girl with short brown hair wearing a black t-shirt and red skirt. Petra immediately stood up and went to greet her.
“Hey Rose, my name’s Petra!”
“So you’re the ones from the other rooms?” she said in a voice that sounded like she was trying to put things together, yet parallel with everyone else, nothing made any sense to her.
Rose went to look at the books in the bookshelf while Petra stood next to her looking at which books she picked out. Alex and I stayed on the sofa in silence and thought about what our next step should be. That went on for about ten excruciatingly long minutes.
Suddenly, I had a gut feeling. This silence only occasionally interrupted by Petra trying to do something exciting was just a calm moment before the storm.
“I hear footsteps,” I said.
They were coming from the staircase and by the moment I realized that, there was another stranger in front of me.
Merely by taking a glimpse at her, I knew she was different from the others. Not just because she didn’t have an assigned room like everyone else, her looks also heavily hinted at her being different. Her pale skin, pale enough to look like a mask, her blood-red eyes and high heels, her long and wavy black hair tied into a ponytail. Her clothes were also a far cry from anything anyone else wore. She wore a black suit which would perfectly suit a businessman, a black skirt and black gloves that had some sort of jewelry attached to the glove, it looked like a ruby.
She took a couple of steps forward to get closer to all of us and started speaking.
“I see everybody is here, splendid!”
Wait, I recognize that voice, she’s the one who told me to come out of my room earlier. There was no mistaking it, that softness, the pitch that was neither low nor high, the slight French accent, that’s her.
“Since I’ve got you all here in one spot, I guess it’s only right for me to introduce myself. My name is Lucia and I am the one that brought you here. Worry not, I will explain everything.”
As Lucia spoke, I glanced around to see what the others concluded about her sudden appearance. Alex seemed to be paying attention, though I could notice that he was reasonably worried.
Rose looked to be even more terrified, however she was trying to hide it as hard as she could. Petra was staring at Lucia, in a sort of a battle stance.
“She might do something reckless,” I mumbled to myself and got back into listening to what Lucia had to say.
“This place might not seem like it for you guys since you’ve only seen one small section of it, but you are inside a mansion. I’ll unlock the door to the main hall and you’ll start working on your way to leave the mansion.”
The door to the main hall? I thought for a bit. All the doors I’ve seen so far either lead to one of our rooms or bathrooms, there’s no way I could’ve missed something that important.
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As I was getting lost in thought I noticed something move in my peripheral vision.
I looked up and saw Petra.
She was running towards Lucia with one of her fists in the air. I expected her to immediately punch Lucia with that hand, but Petra was smarter than me.
When she got close enough, she didn’t try punching with that hand. It was nothing more than a distraction that would allow her to punch Lucia in the stomach with her other hand. I didn’t notice that until the last moment, so I doubted that Lucia would be able to predict Petra’s punch.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. Faster than my eyes could see, Lucia grabbed Petra’s left hand which was going for a gut punch and used her other hand to grab Petra’s neck. Without a struggle, Lucia lifted Petra into the air just by holding her neck.
“Oh Petra, please allow me to finish my explanation and then you can throw your life away,” she said with a massive grin on her face before throwing Petra away like a toy and continuing her speech while everyone stared at her, filled with fear. Nobody dared to say or question anything.
"To leave the mansion you have to discover its secret. It could be in the form of an item, knowledge or something else. You'll know when you find it, but just in case, I'll come when it is found. Simple, right? Sadly, that in itself doesn't make for a fun time, it needs more, what do you call it… Oh yeah, pressure."
"Pressure?" Alex asked in a confused tone.
"Yes, pressure. For that reason one of the participants will be a traitor, personally assigned by me. From time to time that traitor will kill someone, or at least try, so along with the secret of the mansion you also have to find the traitor, but that's not the end. Even if you find the traitor, one of you has to kill them. It wouldn’t be that interesting if you just had to find the traitor."
Kill. That word echoed in my head. Somebody wanted me to kill. An uneasy tension crawled up my frail body, covering my thoughts in fog. Is this real? I didn’t do anything to deserve this!
What am I supposed to do? I was starting to panic again, but Lucia wasn't done talking.
"In case one of you kills someone who isn't the traitor, I've already prepared a solution, though I'll explain that in detail if it happens. That's about all I have to tell you, good luck guys and gals."
After her speech Lucia waved with a sinister smile on her face and walked up the stairs, disappearing like a ghost.
"Huh, where did that bitch go?" Alex yelled out in a voice filled with worry, despair and confusion.
I looked around the room again. The feeling that the place gave off now felt way more tense knowing that my life was now on the line. It was just as I feared, this place wasn't safe.
I turned my head to the wall opposite of the staircase and saw a door.
"Wait, has anyone noticed this door before?" I asked everyone.
"Huh, there's a door there?" Petra asked as she stood back up.
I was hesitating. Nobody knew if that was the door to the main hall or a trap or who knows what, yet I still didn't remember that door being there previously.
Before I gathered the will to approach the door, Rose came closer and reached for the doorknob, her body language and face devoid of any emotion. She opened the door and I peaked at what was outside.
"So that's the main hall," she said.
It was enormous. The floors were checkered marble with a red carpet that went through the entire hall, going up the staircase that stood opposite of the main entrance and separated hallway, one side of the staircase heading to the left side of the second floor while the other went to the right. A part of the second floor was also in the main hall, connected to the staircase and held up by pillars which were as white as snow. It seemed very old fashioned, but the quality and cleanliness suggested that it had been recently built or at least renovated.
I stared at the room from the doorway, I didn’t dare to take a step into the hall.
The room we were in was in the right wing of the first floor, near the main entrance, which was a large shiny door with an uncountable amount of padlocks on it, and there were five other doors on the first floor. One more door on the right wing, two doors on the left wing precisely facing the doors that were on the right, and two more doors, both under the staircase, one on the left side, one on the right.
Where to go? There were so many directions and only one way to escape, so yet again, I let the others take over the situation by moving to the side which prompted Petra to be the first one to take a step into the main hall.
“Okay guys, let’s go,” Petra said, “if we can find this thing quickly, the traitor won’t get a chance to strike! We need to split up.”
Alex immediately stopped her.
“Are you that fucking stupid? You want us to split up right after you heard there was a murderer in this place? That’s without mentioning how you haven’t panicked at all ever since you came here. You’re the most suspicious one out of everyone!” he exclaimed with a couple of tears running down his face.
Rose grabbed Alex’s wrist.
“Calm down. You’re ranting about her killing everyone yet you’re getting all emotional. If you keep acting like that you’ll be the first target, no matter who the traitor is. But who knows, maybe you’re the traitor just trying to pass the blame to someone right from the start.”
Alex didn’t respond and Petra started talking again in an attempt to stop the situation from becoming more awkward.
“You’re right, we can’t be reckless with that traitor Lucia mentioned. Then I’ll take Rose with me and you two can go together as well. If a murder happens we’ll know who did it and I’ll kill the traitor with my bare hands, simple as that. Well, enough with the murder talk, let’s start exploring. The left wing is completely foreign so let’s start from there.”
“But what if there’s no secret? What if she just wants to taunt us before killing us?” Alex mumbled, but only I heard him, and decided not to say anything.
Without giving anyone time to object, she grabbed Rose, who was noticeably shaking, by the hand and took off towards the door closer to the staircase.
“Well, I guess that leaves us with the other door, let’s go Alex,” I finally said something in this extreme situation and began walking to the door standing right in front of me.
Am I really going to explore immediately? We were kidnapped, but we’re doing everything without thinking? Perhaps it’s a way to forget the severity of everything? Maybe the traitor is pushing us to forget about them. I’m an idiot, I should just follow them!
Alex was in front of me so he was the one to open the door. We both went into the room, I entered after him and we promptly started our search. I quickly realized that we were in a dining room because a large portion of the area was covered by a giant table. It was made out of wood and had the shape of an ellipse with five chairs on each of the long sides and one chair on the short sides. I checked under the table, but of course the secret wasn’t that easy to find. There wasn’t much else in the room apart from some decorations like painting and a bookshelf that only had recipe books. I looked through some of them without paying too much attention to the details in case something was off about the books or there was something between the pages.
Nothing.
I sighed. We only recently started checking the room, yet both of us were already frustrated.
“Well, I think we can already say that checking this place further is a waste of time, let’s see what’s next. It’s not like we can’t come back here again,” Alex said before heading to the other door that was in the dining room. It was in the corner between the wall that was the opposite from the way they entered and towards the right. I didn’t say anything, I just followed him quietly.
Alex opened the door cautiously, expecting something to jump out because paranoia already took control of us. Fortunately, all that was in front of him was a short corridor with two doors. By its lenght it seemed that the room on the opposite side was the one where Petra and Rose were, so it was probably already being investigated, therefore I entered the room to the left without saying anything to Alex.
It was a kitchen, way larger than any kitchen that I have ever seen. It had four fridges, each full of different types of foods, drinks and ingredients. Now I at least knew where to come when I needed to eat in case I got stuck here for that long.
Maybe all four of us could have meals together in the dining room? I quickly shook off that thought since I still wasn’t able to handle the idea of spending weeks or even just days in this mansion.
Alex entered the kitchen while I was analyzing the contents of each fridge, checking if there was something inside that was different from the regular food.
After I checked out all the food I spotted a transparent drawer at the bottom of the fridge. I opened and saw that it was filled with small bottles, all of them full. Taking one out to identify what it is I realized what sort of problem I was seeing.
Poison.
That was written on the bottle. Turning the bottle around, I found more information about it.
Will take only around 2 to 5 minutes to take effect depending on the person consuming it, but even a drop is enough to kill someone. Drinking and injecting have the same effect. Don’t keep in a warm place for too long so that the effects don’t wear off.
I put the bottle back and picked up another. All of them said the same thing. The name of the chemical isn’t here and the effects are very unusual. Did Lucia make this poison?
“Alex, come check this out.” I showed him the poison bottles.
“We need to throw them away,” Alex hastily made up his mind, “I’ll look for a place where we can throw it away, so that the traitor can’t use it.”
I kept searching the kitchen while Alex was looking for a place where he could throw away the poison bottles. After being extremely against the idea of splitting up, he went off alone. How ironic.
A couple of minutes went by and I was still checking the kitchen. I didn't think the secret was there, but there were loads of interesting things that weren’t found in most other kitchens.
Suddenly, Alex entered the room. I didn’t notice him at first because I was too focused on my search to hear his footsteps. He opened the fridge that contained the poisons and started putting them outside the fridge.
“I found a place to throw these away,” he said as he was pulling all the bottles out. “There was a room with a dumpster that is basically just a ginormous hole, it will work for sure! The bottles will break, plus nobody can get down there safely.”
We got to work. There was a drawer in the kitchen near the fridge that had only plastic bags so I pulled some out and helped Alex pack up the poison. He slipped and almost dropped a couple of bottles so I took over putting them outside of the fridge. We each carried one bag to the room with Alex leading me as I didn’t know where it was. We left the kitchen and went inside the room where I assumed Petra and Rose were.
The room was pretty small and it had a calm atmosphere. In front of me was a brown armchair and a table, behind it was a bookshelf. On the left and on the right were doors, the right door probably leading back to the main hall and the left bringing me closer to the room that Alex wanted to show me. This is probably some sort of reading room, there to let people relax after a long day. Rest was something I desperately needed in this sort of situation, however I didn’t have time for that and I didn’t have a good reason to stay in here either since Rose and Petra searched it already considering that they weren’t there anymore, so I continued following Alex without saying anything.
We went through the door on our left that connected the room to a hallway. There were two ways to go. A straight line that led towards a single door and a turn to the right in the middle of the straight line. Alex stopped for a second.
“Okay, we just have to go forward. To the right is a staircase and I didn’t want to go to the second floor.”
We entered the room in front of us. It was pretty cramped, however it didn’t have anything other than a huge hole in the center surrounded by scraps of metal that I assumed were there to stop people from falling in.
“Hey Alex, wouldn’t the traitor be able to take back the poison bottles easily?”
“Take a look inside. I already told you why it’ll work.”
I listened to him and peaked inside. What the hell is this? There was a hole inside the dumpster and the bottom was so far from where we were that it was impossible to go down without dying or using something like a rope. I threw my bag inside and moved so that Alex could throw his bag in.
With that, we went back into the hallway and as we were about to enter the small reading room that we had passed a minute ago, Petra came out of it with Rose.
“Hey!” Petra waved at us even though we were right next to her, “did you guys find anything relating to the secret? Rose and I are still clueless. Plus, Rose had to go to the bathroom and I didn’t want to leave her alone, so we lost a bit of time while I waited for her outside her room.”
“Nothing here either,” Alex answered her question with a disappointed look, “but we realized that there are tools for killing scattered around. One of the refrigerators had loads of small bottles filled with poison.”
“Well, what did you do with that poison?”
“Adam and I threw it all in the dumpster, no way I’d let that stay in reach!”
“Good job!” Petra gave him a thumbs up that seemed slightly sarcastic. We checked all the rooms again together in case we missed something while investigating in two groups. Because all of us were in the long hallway already, we started from that and made our way to the dining room, but nothing new was found.
“Everyone, I have an idea!” Petra yelled out as we entered the dining room “From now on, let’s all eat in the dining room at the same time, starting tomorrow. I’ve already realized Lucia won’t let us out that easily so we need to make the best out of what we got, don’t we?”
I don’t like considering the possibility that we’ll be here for days, but I doubt it’s going to end any other way. I guess that idea isn’t too terrible.
Before any of us had the time to talk about the plans for the meeting in the dining room, a loud noise came from the main hall.
Without thinking, I ran out to see what happened and so did everyone else. The main hall was different. Most things stayed normal, but on the wall above the staircase was an enormous clock and Lucia was on the staircase looking at it like she was very proud of it.
“Alright, it’s working fine,” she said before turning around and seeing everyone looking at her and the clock. “Oh hey everyone, what do you think about this thing? I knew there would be issues to trap you here without letting you check the time, so I made this, all by myself. It will make a loud sound at midnight and at nine in the morning, it’s just there to signal when you should be getting in and out of bed, I don’t want my guests to feel unwelcome. You might’ve noticed that there aren’t any windows around you, so I considered this a necessity.”
We all stood there, unable to say anything. How did she even set up that large clock all by herself? Thinking about that was useless, nothing about this place could be explained rationally.
“I’m tired, so I’m going to bed like Lucia suggested, I don’t know about you guys.” Petra yawned and went back to the place where our bedrooms were, with all of us following her.
I went inside my room and noticed that there was a key on top of the nightstand. Maybe it’s for my room, to stop the traitor from entering during nighttime.
After trying it out, I realized that I was right. That gave me the idea to check out the drawers and closet before going to bed. The drawers were disappointingly empty, yet the closet was far more intriguing. It was full of clothes, but all of them were the same as the outfit I wore when I woke up. So, if anything happens to my clothes, I can merely change into the same outfit. With that knowledge, I took a shower and laid in bed.
Falling asleep was hard, my brain was filled with questions and worries, however eventually my tiredness overcame me and I hit the sack.