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Escape Room

Will you escape?

By Laura GrayPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 9 min read
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Escape Room
Photo by Jolly Yau on Unsplash

I pulled onto the street of the old Haunted Schoolhouse. Built in 1890, it served as a one-room schoolhouse well into the 1960s. Once public schools started opening in the area, attendance diminished until, in 1970, its doors were closed. The building sat vacant for nearly a decade until it was resurrected as a very popular haunted house attraction. In 2020, a worldwide pandemic forced the attraction to close, and then in 2021 a new buyer purchased the property and transformed it into an escape room.

"The parking lot is full," I half mumbled to myself as we drove over the dirt road leading up to the old building. "Are you sure you got the correct date and time, Coll?" I asked louder, the question directed to my girlfriend sitting in the front seat next to me.

"I'm positive, Rick!" she exclaimed, pulling the tickets from her purse. "Saturday, October 30th, 8:00pm."

"Then why are there so many cars here? That schoolhouse couldn't possibly house all these people."

"Maybe they're decoration?" Colleen suggested.

"Yeah, maybe," I muttered, an uneasy feeling beginning to settle over me.

I drove up to the schoolhouse looking for an empty parking spot. The headlights of my pickup truck bounced over the front porch. "This place looks abandoned. Maybe we should just go."

"No, we can't!" Colleen exclaimed. "It's part of the appeal!"

Sighing, I put my truck in reverse and drove back toward the main road. At the first available spot, I pulled onto the grass.

Colleen and I got out and started down the dirt road toward the schoolhouse. Her excitement thrummed around us. I chuckled to myself and kissed the top of her head. "You're lucky I love you," I teased.

Colleen grinned up at me, all but skipping along. I mentally counted the vehicles as we walked past; one on either side of the dirt road. By the time we reached the door of the schoolhouse, I'd counted 140 vehicles. The knot in my stomach grew.

"Coll, I really don't know about this," I said in a low voice, afraid of--something? someone?-- hearing me.

"Aww, are you scared?" she teased. "My big, strong boyfriend is afraid of Halloween now?"

Normally her teasing would have me tickling her until she begged me to stop, demanding she take it back. Today, however, I just felt ill.

Before I could stop her, Colleen had pushed open the door to the schoolhouse. Bright light flooded the immediate area and I fell back a step, my eyes struggling to adjust to the sudden change.

"Welcome to Schoolhouse Escape Room!" a woman dressed in a witch's costume greeted from a desk on the left of the small foyer. The area had been newly remodeled, with drywall partitioning off the reception area from the rest of the schoolhouse. It was decorated in orange and purple lights, black spiders, fake webbing, and a swooping bat rescued from the former haunted house attraction.

"Thank you!" Colleen gushed, walking over to turn in the tickets. The witch began to explain the rules, handing both Colleen and I liability forms.

"What's this?" I asked, accepting the clipboard.

"Just a form stating that should something happen to you, Schoolhouse Escape Room will not be held liable, nor undergo legal proceedings. Standard practice, really."

I looked over the form. It seemed simple enough; no hidden catches, no weird phrases. I filled out my portion and handed it to Miss Witch. As she took it I turned, taking in the rest of the tiny space. Where the reception desk sat to the left when you walked in, there was a rack of pamphlets to the right, varying from Things to Do, to the history of the building, to maps leading to various activity trails.

"As soon as I open this door," Witch said, gesturing to the door opposite the entrance, "your thirty minutes begin. At the end of the thirty minutes, the house lights will come on and the game will be over. If you do find your way out, you are free to go."

Acid churned in my stomach.

"Free to go? No prizes or anything?" I asked, trying to mask the nervousness I felt. Colleen shot me an annoyed look. I ignored her.

The witch took a couple of steps toward the door leading into the rest of the old schoolhouse. To the left of the door was a light switch with three switches. The witch flipped the first one to the OFF position and the second to ON. "Your thirty minutes start," she flipped the third switch to OFF and the reception area was plunged into darkness. She opened the door and said, "now. Good luck."

The schoolhouse was dimly lit with overhead strands of lights. I glanced around, noticing a door on the opposite end of the schoolhouse that would ultimately lead to the outside. There were old turn-of-the-century style desks lined up in rows of seven on either side of a center aisle, a teacher's desk at the front of the classroom, a timer on the wall above the chalkboard, and nothing else.

Colleen squealed beside me. "This is going to be FUN!" she exclaimed. I wished I'd felt her enthusiasm. "Start looking in all the desks over here for clues, Rick. I'll look over there."

She bound off toward the rows of desks furthest from me. An icy sweat formed on the back of my neck. Colleen shrieked and pulled a wooden stake from the first desk. "Rick, LOOK!"

The stake had a capital O at the top in white paint, the black lights above giving it an eerie appearance. "I think it's a cypher!"

I watched her go through the second desk and pull out another piece of wood. "It's got an E! O-E. What could it be?!" She giggled. "I just rhymed."

I glanced back at the door we'd just come through and noticed that light now barely filtered through the sides and bottom. I looked toward the door at the front of the room and began to make my way toward it.

Behind me, Colleen continued rummaging through the desks, either calling out different letters or grunting in disappointment when one was empty.

I crossed the classroom in ten steps. The door leading to the outside had no lock, not even a keyhole. "Hey Coll?"

Colleen glanced up, mere feet away. "What are you doing already up front? Did you find anything?"

"No, look," I said pointing to the door.

"Rick, we only have 25 minutes left to find all--."

"Coll, this door has no lock on it."

"--the clues. What?"

"Come look," I said, standing aside as she rounded the last row of desks. She came closer and looked at the door.

"Well what's the point of an escape room if the door doesn't lock?"

"Exactly," I responded, reaching out to turn the knob. Collen put her hand on mine.

"Stop! Didn't you hear what the receptionist said? We have to find all the clues first before going through this door."

"But if this door is the way out and has no locks, why do we need to find more clues?"

"C'mon Rick, you're ruining this for me." She did that cute lip pout thing but I looked at her ear.

"Coll, you don't think this is even a little bit weird?"

"Of course it's weird, Rick, that's what it's supposed to be! Now come on and help me."

Colleen went over to the first row of desks where she'd laid out the stakes she'd found. There were four, and in no particular order. Like the first stake she found, the letters at the top of each piece of wood were all capitalized with white paint that glowed eerily under the black lights.

O-E-L-L

More random letters adorned the rest of the stake in both upper and lowercase. They didn't make sense.

Within minutes, Colleen had joined me again and laid out three more stakes.

O-E-L-L-C-N-E

"What does this mean?" Colleen asked absently, glancing nervously at the timer as we tried different combinations. Suddenly, she gasped.

"Rick!" She gathered all of the stakes and rearranged them until they spelled out C-O-L-L-E-E-N. The icy dread that had formed at the back of my neck now trickled down my spine.

"They personalized this for us!" While Colleen was nearly shouting for joy, a thick, heavy dread was settling over me.

"Coll, we have to get out of here, NOW!" I grabbed her hand and pushed her past the desks until we were in the center aisle.

"No, Rick!" she said, wrenching her hand free. "We have fifteen minutes and I'm not leaving!"

"Fine," I growled angrily. "I'll be waiting for you outside."

I stomped the few steps to the door and nearly ripped it from its hinges as I pulled it open. The half moon was bright enough to reflect off a smattering of headstones and the hundreds of people walking around, looking lost. I glanced back at Colleen who was reading and mumbling the rest of the text on the stakes.

"The key to your escape is found with the headmistress."

She shot me a dirty look as she approached the teacher's desk next to me and began rummaging around. "Coll, please," I whispered, desperately.

She ignored me as she pulled open each drawer, looking inside and feeling around. I sighed and stepped past the threshold. The door slammed shut of its own accord, causing me to fall from the small stoop, startled.

The people walking around the graveyard looked up at me sadly but kept walking around. I stood and reached for the door again. The handle wouldn't turn. I pounded with both fists, yelling Colleen's name. It took a few seconds for me to realize that neither the pounding nor my yelling made any sound.

Wha-?

I stepped back and looked stupidly at the door. It began to open and Colleen stepped into the frame. She looked around and called my name.

"Rick?"

I stood not two feet in front of her, how could she not see me? And how was her voice crystal clear?

"I swear to God Rick if you're around the corner waiting to scare me," she stalked off toward the side of the building then stopped, looking back. She seemed to be looking right at me and nervously called my name again. "Rick?"

She glanced around one last time and headed toward the front of the schoolhouse. My phone chimed.

Did you go back to the truck? Where are you?

I quickly typed back a response:

You walked right past me!

I hit SEND and looked up desperately, willing Colleen's phone to chime. She stared at her phone, becoming angrier by the second. I looked down at mine. The message showed that it had sent and been delivered successfully.

I tried to walk toward Colleen but was stopped by an invisible force at the corner of the building.

Another chime.

RICK I'M NOT JOKING

I typed out another message:

Baby, I'm right here in the cemetery!

More time passed and Colleen let out a frustrated growl, stalking off toward my truck. I heard it roar to life minutes later.

My phone chimed.

I'm leaving. You can Uber your way home.

The feeling of dread turned into despair as I realized that there was a reason I saw hundreds of vehicles and hundreds of people around me: those who played the game got to escape. Those who took the easy way out, were doomed.

fiction
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About the Creator

Laura Gray

Coffee gets me started; my toddler keeps me haggard.

I've always had a passion for writing but fear has stopped me from sharing my work with anyone. Vocal is my push to step out of my comfort zone.

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