Chapter Thirteen
Disappearances


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Teri and Brian had both headed up to the fourth floor. It looked exactly like the second floor, with hallways leading off from the main hall.

“Umm...so..which hall should we look in first?” Brian asked Teri.

“How bout the first one on our right here,” she answered as she cautiously started to step towards it.

Without a word, they started to walk down the long dark hall. No candles were on the walls and neither of them had a flashlight. It was pitch black and they sun having just set didn’t help them. Brian was walking in front of Teri when he stopped short and Teri slammed into him.

“What the hell was that......” Teri started to say with annoyance in her voice.

“Shhh....I think I heard something,” Brian whispered. Then they both heard it. A creaking noise was coming from somewhere up the hall. Teri started to shake with fear as soon as she heard it. She grabbed onto the back of Brian’s shirt and tugged on it.

“Brian....let’s get out of here. Now!” she said, trying not to sound too scared.

“No, we have to see if it has something to do with Nick.”

Teri didn’t want to go any further but she knew they had to find Nick so she reluctantly followed Brian down the hall, sticking close to him the whole time. The creaking noise was getting louder now. The two of them turned around a corner and saw a faint light at the end of the hall. They both strained to see it but couldn’t decipher what it was. The continued to walk slowly towards the light and then it finally came into view. Teri almost screamed and felt like throwing up when she saw what it was. Brian stared at it in horror but couldn’t look away.

Hanging in the middle of the hall was a man and a rope hung around his neck. His hands and feet were tied together and blood was all over him. His eyes had been gouged out and he had been gutted. Blood lay all over the floor underneath him. Fortunately, for them, the man was not Nick.

Teri grabbed Brian’s hand and tugged on his arm. “Please.....let’s go now....” she pleaded quietly.

Brian nodded slowly and started to back away from the dead man. The two of them turned around and this time, Teri screamed when she saw what was in front of them. It was the ghost of the dead man. He was standing on the ground now but the rope still hung around his neck. He stared at them with unseeing eyes and then raised a shaky finger and pointed at Brian.

“You’re next,” the ghost said. Then a wind blew through the hall and the ghost disappeared. The only faint light that had been in the hall disappeared and the creaking sound came back. Both of them were in absolute shock and couldn’t move. Then they both heard a knob turn and a door creak open next to them. Before Brian knew what was happening, he was grabbed and pulled into the room and the door was locked. At the same time, the floor slid out from underneath Teri and she fell into blackness.

......................

Meanwhile, Kevin and JC had both headed down to the basement. They had managed to find a light switch and were now looking around the room. It looked exactly like Justin had describe it, only the writing on the wall was gone. No trace of it was anywhere, which they thought was really weird.

After looking around for half an hour, JC finally said “Let’s go back up, he’s not down here, we’ve looked everywhere for him.”

Kevin nodded and started to walk towards the stairs with JC right behind him. Just as Kevin reached the first step, something caught his eye. He quickly turned to his right and stared at the wall.

“Was that door there before?” he asked JC.

JC looked over where Kevin was pointing and stared at the wall in shock. “Where’d that...come from?”

“Let’s check it out,” Kevin quickly said.

They both cautiously walked towards it. It was a small door. It wasn’t very tall and not very wide and the same weird designs were on it like every other door in the house. JC reached forward and started to turn the knob but it was locked.

“Damnit,” he said, “what if Nick’s back there?”

The two of them started to pound on the door, hoping that it would open.

......................

On the other side of that door, the skeleton looked up when he heard pounding on the other side of the door. This was not good for him. He had almost killed Nick and now he was gonna have to stop. He dropped Nick to the floor and said quietly, “I’ll get you again later.” And with that, he disappeared. As soon as he left, the skeletons stopped moving and disappeared. The bars disappeared from the door. Where the skeletons had been, portraits now hung on the wall above where they had been with chairs beneath the paintings. A very long table with many candles was in the center of the huge room now and a carpet covered the floor. The whole room had changed in an instant.

The door swung open and Kevin and JC stepped into the room, kind of shocked that the door was suddenly able to open up. JC took a step forward and almost fell to the floor. He looked down and cried out, “Oh my God! It’s Nick!”

Kevin quickly came over and both of them bent down to look at Nick. He was unconscious and deathly pale. Kevin checked for a pulse and found it, though it was very faint.

“He’s alive, barely though. Come on, let’s get him out of here and upstairs,” Kevin said.

The two of them picked Nick up and carried him out of the room, neither of them having a clue of what had happened to him.


Chapter Fourteen - The Mirror

Go back to 'The Game'