The House of Horrors

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Well, it wasn’t supposed to begin like this, either. If anyone had known what was going to become of them, would they still have suggested going? Maybe. Or maybe we wouldn’t have cared. We’ve spent our whole lives being sensible, and now was the time to be reckless. We were young, and wanted to have fun. So if we knew what fate had in store for us, maybe we would have continued anyway. It’s all about the thrills, and although this is dreadful, it’s the first time I’ve ever felt well and truly alive. So I suppose I should start from the beginning. This is my story, and I’m the last one alive to tell it.

It was the morning of the 30th of October when we initially saw the flyer. It was pinned to a tree outside one of my neighbour’s houses, coincidentally belonging to my best friend and his parents. “The Halloween Fair, come one, come all. But only if you dare...” is all it said... Yet there was something strangely captivating about it. The masked figure on the front had something in his eyes; something that made the bottom of my spine tingle and shudder. I knew my parents would never approve me going, so I made plans with a group of friends to sneak out and attend the Halloween fair the next night. I didn’t know at the time whether the butterflies in my stomach were from excitement, or fear.

The next day passed like a blur. School classes didn't grab my attention, nor did scolding due to incomplete homework because of the anticipation of the Halloween fair. For all of us, time glided by like a shooting star- being significant for mere moments before promptly ceasing to ever be acknowledged again. Even being followed home in the dark didn't faze me. If it did, then perhaps there wouldn't have been a story worth telling. But I digress. After telling my parents that I would be skipping dinner and going to sleep due to feeling ill, I eagerly clopped up the stairs and rummaged through many wardrobes to find my Halloween attire. I wanted to be the scariest thing my friends had ever seen. However, whilst fervently throwing fake blood packs into a rucksack, I was stunned by a loud female shriek from downstairs. I stood still with bated breath, unsure on what to do.

The shriek turned out to be nothing more than a spider that had crawled its way into the kitchen. I heard my dad telling her she was being silly and put it outside. Now all I had to do was wait. Wait until they go to bed so I can start the night’s adventures. A text from a friend told me that three of them were already out, so it was just me and my best friend let to get there. The hour it took for my parents to go to bed was the longest of my life. And I just couldn’t stop thinking about those eyes on the flyer. They had captivated me in a way I couldn’t understand, and I had thought of nothing but those eyes and the adventure ahead. Finally, he heard the door to his parents’ room click shut and lock. It was finally time...

I put on my Ashura mask and rucksack and proceeded to tiptoe to the door. Childhood memories of being punished for sneaking out at night were prevalent, so every precaution was followed. I turned the door handle and... The door was locked. Darn. That door being locked I heard...my parent's bedroom door doesn't have a lock on it!  This was not going to stop this evening's entertainment however. I shuffled to the window next to my bed, quietly opened it and proceeded to quietly clamber out of the window sill, onto my balcony. Without any trepidation, I hopped off the balcony, into a shrub bush below. Hah. Over my dead body would I miss this fair.  After brushing myself down, I hastily shambled onto the main street, feeling a sense of achievement and excitement. It would only be a 10 minute walk and the evening festivities would be underway. Things were looking up.

All of my friends were already gathered at the old theatre that shut down many years ago. It was old and dusty, but we still played here all the time. It just so happened to be the venue for the Halloween fair, sealing my idea that it was fate that led us to it. I greeted my friends and we proceeded to the entrance. No one seemed scared as of yet, but it was a dark and foggy night and the old theatre made the whole thing eerie to me. There was no entry fee. Closing my eyes and taking a deep breath, I followed my friends inside. Little did I know, I’d be the only one leaving through that very same door.

The first person to greet us appeared to be the man from the front of the flyer. He was wearing the same mask and the very same twinkle in his eye that had captivated me from the start. It was only after arriving here and seeing it in person that the sense of dread came over me. But now that I was with my friends, it seemed far more difficult to chicken out. We each got given a map of the fair ground and all decided to stick together in a group. Our first port of call: the house of mirrors.

The house of mirrors was held in one of the larger screens in the theatre, and as such was absolutely enormous. We’d need a map of just the room to navigate the maze of mirrors. To add to the fun, there were mirrors that rotated and changed direction, and were by far the most distorted mirrors I’d ever laid eyes upon. Long gone were the days where all a fair mirror did was make your head look disproportionally large. No, these completely distorted your line of view and the entire room around you seemed different than it did when you stepped in. We all agreed to stay in a group and try and navigate our way to the centre of the maze, where a prize was supposedly waiting. Without a second of doubt, for if I had felt one I knew I would have turned around, we all stepped into the maze.

It seemed like hours had passed, but in reality it couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. We were turning around and around in circles, and moving through mirrored doors, finding ourselves back where we’d just been. There was something so disorientating about this room. It wasn’t just the mirrors; it was almost as if some sort of spell had been cast over the room. Something that made us not think clearly. That’s why it took us so long to discover that one of our teammates was missing. We ran around the entire maze over and over calling his name, but nothing. We couldn’t find him. Or hear him. Convincing ourselves that he had found his way back to the entrance and was waiting there for us, we decided to try and find out way back to the door to meet him. As we were navigating the maze once again, I briefly caught something out of the corner of my eye. There was a mirror that was ajar enough to see something glistening from inside. I took a quick glance at the others of the group, who were still determined to find their way out, and quickly dodged inside the slightly open door. On the podium in the middle of the room sat a small, black stone. I could tell that this was the middle of the maze and that the stone was the prize, although I didn’t know what the stone meant at the time. I grabbed it, slipped it into my pocket, and ran to join the others.

We all found our way out of the room. Well, not all of us. Standing outside the door, we could clearly see that our friend hadn’t made it out and was waiting for us. As a group, we agreed to keep moving and hopefully bump into him in this nightmare of a fair. There were a few more places on the map that we wanted to see, but we decided to go with something a little less taxing on the mind. That is why we ended up at the helter skelter ride. But this helter skelter ride was like nothing any of us had ever seen before. It was easily three times larger than any we had seen before, and the twists and turns took you under tunnels and through water pits, and even ended in a water pit at the bottom. None of us had brought anything we could get wet, so we simply all stripped down to our boxer shorts and climbed up the ladder. We were all convinced that this was going to be a fun ride. Oh how wrong we were.

I was the first to go, so I climbed the ladder, growing short of breath while doing so. Standing at the top of the helter skelter was like looking into a different dimension. The old theatre added the eerie feel to the room, but everything had been decorated with fair equipment and lights. It was strangely beautiful and creepy at the same time. Taking a deep breath, I stood in front of the slide and began my decent downwards. All I can say is that it was the most fun I’d ever had. The rush of the steep slide was unbelievable, and the added water pools and tunnels were exhilarating. I could hardly contain my excitement and wanted to go again, but it was the rest of my friends turn. Gradually they came down one by one, all as excited as I was when I’d reached the bottom. Except... Where was the third? My first two friends had come down as normal, but friend number 3 had completely disappeared. On closer inspection, the helter skelter had a trap door in one of the tunnels. We could hardly believe it. We had been so stupid. Neither hitting, kicking, punching, pulling, pushing, nor jumping on it would open the trap door. It would appear that another one hat bitten the dust. Who was next to go?

After the previous two events, the three of us left all desperately wanted to leave. We went to the front door but it was locked. We pulled and pushed and tried to hard to get the door open, but nothing worked. Eventually we called out for the masked man. He did not answer. I don’t think we expected him to. After bashing down the doors a few more times, we figured that there must be an exit inside one of these old theatre screens. Fire exits were everywhere. Looking at their map, they decided that the tightrope walk event in the smallest screen of the building most likely had a fire door, and it was much easier to stay united as a group in a smaller room. I shivered as I thought about entering another one. Another “room of doom”, as I called it. Nevertheless, it was the only plan of action that we had. Inside the room, there was a tightrope with no net, and no safety harnesses. There was a wall right down the middle of the room was a wall, completely stopping us from crossing the room without going over the tightrope.  But on the other side we could see a door. The door was open and we could see the moonlight streaming through it. We had found a way out. Now we just needed to find a way to get out.

Yet again, it was my turn first on the tightrope. I suppose because I’m the heaviest, they wanted to make sure these rides were safe for their thinner bodies.  I climbed up the ladder to the tightrope and stood at the top, looking down. It was a large fall, guaranteed to kill if you were to fall. That’s what this event was: play or death. I completely cleared my head of anything other than balance and took one step forward. The creak of the rope beneath my feet was an unsettling one, but I refused to think about it. As if by miracle, through deep breathing and clearing my mind, I made it to the other side and climbed down. I nearly jumped for joy... and then realised that it was my friends’ turns. One climbed up the ladder. I refused to watch to see if he made it, but before I even knew it he landed with a thump next to me after jumping down from the last few rungs of the ladder. We hugged, grateful that we made it, and then watched our final friend make his way across the tightrope.

He was doing well and we were sure that he was going to reach the end. But, on the very last step before the ladder, we watched his foot slip off of the rope. It was as if it was happening in slow motion. First his back foot slipped off the rope, which happened to have been the food his weight was on. Then his whole body proceeded to fall. He tried to catch the rope, but it was no use. I watched my best friend die that day, and I don’t think it is a sight I will ever forget. We couldn’t even reach him because he was on the other side of the wall. But we knew. We knew he had passed on impact. Both of us knew that we couldn’t waste time grieving, and agreed together to grieve when we were free from this hell hole. And so, we ran through the open door, expecting to come into the freedom of the outside. But it was not meant to be.

Instead we entered a corridor that turned to the left. The right was a dead end. I led the team through the winding corridors, as they were far too narrow to walk together. They were even too narrow for me to turn around or move my arms at all. It was damn and dusty and the air smelled stale. We followed the corridor as far as it would take us, and yet again ended up at the entrance hall with the large wooden door leading to the exit. I ran to the front door and attempted to open it. To my surprise, it opened. I turned around to face my friend with the largest grin of excitement on my face, finally being offered our freedom. Except... my friend was nowhere to be seen. I called his name. I called all of my missing friends’ names. Silence. Then the sound of footsteps, far too heavy to belong to the shoes of a 14 year old. The masked man must have been coming back. So, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and turned to the door.

I ran out of that front door as fast as I could, and continued running until I was so short of breath I felt like I was going to collapse. Taking a deep breath, I sat down heavily on the grass. I was absolutely convinced that the others would find their way out on their own, so sat there patiently waiting... waiting... waiting... And still nothing. All this time I realised I had been playing with the stone that I had found in the mirror maze. There was some sort of carving on it, I could feel it. I pulled out a small torch and shone it onto the stone. My hands instantly started shaking, causing me to stop the stone. It hadn’t been an escape after all. He had let me go. And my friends are never coming back. I stood up with a heavy heart, and started the long walk home, leaving the stone face side up behind. I was a changed man.  An adult man. Not once did I look back. Not once did I ever want to read those words again.
“You will be the only survivor...”