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Drawn to the Dark: A Nightmare to Remember Chapter 9: Vivid Hallucinations

Chapter 8

Chapter 10

Fandom: Escape the Night

Summary: The guests are so close to freedom. Will they escape, or will the madness consume them?

Warnings: Electrocution and Stabbing

Word Count: 3,568

The five remaining guests sat in the dining room, searching in vain for the motivation to keep moving. They only had two more owners to free. Which meant two more deadly challenges awaited them. Any animosity between the guests was either dead, buried, or both. They could barely stomach the thought of one of them dying. It took every shred of Oli’s willpower to open the journal and begin reading.

“Vincent Wells is a madman,” Oli began, “He sees impossible, horrifying things.”

“Sound like anyone else we know?” Joey commented. Selena glared. Perhaps there was one more person she could stomach dying.

Oli ignored him and continued. “He would stare endlessly at lightbulbs. I never knew what he saw, but it seemed like he was trying to burn holes into his eyes. His sanity may be gone, but his heart is good. He hid something in the dining room, but I was never able to find it.”

With their new task in hand, the five got up from the table and began to look around. It didn’t take long for Oli to find a box locked with a number lock, each number being matched with a color.

“The journal said that he liked to stare at the lightbulbs,” Eva pondered, “Maybe there is a clue in one.”

They continued their search around the room this time focusing on the many, many different sources of light. Selena wandered next door into the study and noticed something odd. Hadn’t that light been on the last time they were here?

She unscrewed the bulb and, sure enough, on the bottom was a number written in one of the colors on the lock. At the same time, the others found other lightbulbs with their own color and number. The guests huddled back around the box. As it opened with a click, Joey pulled out a key to a room on the second floor.

They made their way upstairs unsure of what they would find. None of them had encountered a “madman” before. Selena tried to repress the images her brain was cooking up. They weren’t going to help even if they were true.

They entered the room on the second floor and were met with an empty bed. The room was neat and tidy as if awaiting its next guest. It didn’t look like anyone lived there let alone a madman.

They then turned to find a man in a straight jacket standing in the corner. The sight alone was enough to get LeLe to try and leave the room. He continued to face the corner as if he was unbothered by their presence. Or perhaps he was unaware of their presence.

“Hello?” Oli said.

Vincent slowly turned around to face them, but his eyes stared at something a thousand miles away.

“Vincent?” Selena tried.

The man blinked and saw the five people for the first time. His body clenched in fear.

“How are you?” he asked. “How long have you been there? Did the doctor send you? Please I promise I told him everything I know I-”

“No, no, no,” LeLe reassured, “We’re not from the doctor.”

“We’re here to help you,” Eva added.

Vincent scans them frantically until his eyes land on Selena. Whatever he saw, it seemed to calm him down enough to have a conversation.

“The house seems inviting at first,” he started, “It feels warm and safe. Like the home you never had. A place where all the things you’ve seen won’t matter, but then it catches you, and it never lets you go. It has me trapped in this jacket so that I may never escape.”

Vincent tugs on the jacket restricting his movement. He began to mutter to himself. The guests couldn’t quite make out what he said, but he twisted and turned back and forth as if he was two people having one conversation. An urgent one.

Vincent turned back to the group. “You need to find the three keys to the straight jacket to free me. They are hidden deep in my darkest hallucinations. Out on the landing, there is an inkblot that will show you how to get there. Hurry!”

The group did not hesitate in taking his advice. They hastily made their way out of the room. All except for one.

“Selena,” Vincent called out.

Selena stopped at the doorway and faced him. “How do you know my name?”

“Be careful, Selena,” he continued, “Those like us, those drawn to the dark but born in the light, we are not destined for pleasant lives.”

“What are you tal-” Selena’s question was interrupted by Vincent's ear-piercing scream. She silently left the room. He was in no condition to answer her questions.

The others were gathered around a table by the stairs staring at a piece of paper covered in the black splotches. As she gets closer, she sees that underneath the splotches are a map of the manor and its grounds. Two marks indicated places outside the manor.

“What did he want?” Oli asked.

“I hope I never find out,” Selena muttered.

The group went back downstairs and out the door to the house. Selena felt a shiver run up her spine as she crossed the threshold.

The guests find themselves at the greenhouse. The dense, humid air inside clung to their skin just as it did the plants. They quickly began to search around for anything that could be hiding a key or a clue. There was a clipboard sitting on the lip of one of the planters, but it was just a series of diagrams showing plant classifications.

Joey reached into the dirt to look underneath a nearby rock. As his fingers slipped through two eye sockets, he realized what it actually was. He yelped and quickly dropped the skull.

Over on the other side of the greenhouse, Oli and Selena spot a leather-bound journal sitting by a stool. As Oli goes to pick it, Selena's eyes are drawn to the paper-thin walls. There was not much light inside, but there was enough to see. And enough to illuminate the lumbering shadow getting larger.

“Look out!” she shouts as she pulls Oli away from the wall. A second later, a decaying husk of a man’s arm smashes through the wall and swipes at the spot where Oli used to be. The zombie growled at them as it tried in vain to catch its prey.

“Thanks,” he whispered. Selena nodded.

The group gathered in the center as Oli read the journal. It was of a scientist working to combine plant and animal matter into some kind of swamp man. His first attempt failed, resulting in a mindless creature only desiring destruction. The zombie outside groaned louder.

He had managed to perfect his formula by burying the body parts in specific dirt and then combining it with the plants. The guests once again ran around the greenhouse, searching for the right plants and all the body parts that they needed. None of them were sure if it was a good idea. They had no idea if this swamp man creature would help, try to kill them, or what, but it was the closest thing to a clue they had.

It took a minute to find all the body parts, mostly because nobody wanted to touch them. LeLe ended up searching for them the most while everyone else focused on finding the right plants. They weren’t sure how much they needed, so they just kept piling everything onto a nearby compost pile until a massive creature bursted out of it.

The guests didn’t think twice before they started running. The Swamp Man followed them out of the greenhouse. They had made it onto the path before they noticed the sounds of a struggle. They turned back towards the greenhouse to see the zombie fighting the Swamp Man. Well, fighting was a kind way of putting it. The zombie was no match against the Swamp Man’s sheer size and strength. It didn’t take long before the zombie was on the ground, and the Swamp Man was carrying its body off to who knows where.

The guests erupted in cheer. It was a rare moment of victory for them that night. Joey noticed something gleaming on the ground near where the fight had broken out and led them back into the grass. Sure enough, there was a key lying where the zombie had once been.

They pulled back out the map and followed it to the next hallucination. The field around them morphed and grew into a forested clearing covered in rocks and trees. In the darkness, many trees bulged in the center as the guests found themselves staring into masks of many different shapes and sizes.

They paused near the center of the clearing where a woman was standing in a circle of rocks covered by more masks. Her own face was concealed with a fencing mask. She simply stood there, giving no indication of if she had any idea they were there, but none of them wanted to test it given she was holding a katana in her hand.

A plaque was carved into the trees giving them their instructions. They had to find 5 specific masks by solving 5 riddles. Finding the right mask will reveal the next riddle. If they pick the wrong one, the woman will attack them. There was a pile of burlap sacks in a pile next to the tree that kept them protected from the woman and basically acted as an extra life.

The first riddle was ‘the demon that is dreaming’. The guests spread out around the clearing. None of them were quite sure what the riddle meant by dreaming. LeLe suggested a very colorful mask. Eva seemed drawn to one that she insisted looked like the moon. They kept going back and forth between that one and a black one Joey had found. With the same accuracy as a coin toss, they tried Joey’s. Unfortunately, they chose tails.

“Shit,” Joey whispered as the woman approached them.

They quickly pulled the burlap sack over their heads. Selena closed her eyes, not that she could anything through the sack if they were open. She could hear the footsteps of the woman getting closer, and prayed to whatever would listen that she wasn’t picked.

The cold night air flew into Selena’s face. She sighed as she opened her eyes, revealing what she already knew. The woman was standing back where she had been before with Selena’s sack at her feet.

“Great,” Selena muttered to herself. She yanked the mask that Eva was suggesting of the tree. It was the right one.

“Music plays, the dancer grows, spot me with a liar’s nose,” she read off the inside of the mask.

Luckily this one was easier to spot. A mask covered in music notes with a long, pointed nose was laying on a nearby rock. As they picked it up, LeLe grabbed Selena’s arm.

“Hey, look I’m gonna be nice for the first time tonight,” she said, extending her own bag out for Selena.

“Thanks, but you keep it.” It was a nice gesture, but whoever got taken at this stage didn’t really matter. They only seemed to be in actual danger at the voting challenges.

“Okay,” LeLe shrugged. She walked over to the rest of the group.

Forged in hate, I am the vessel of your nightmares. The protector of your fears. That was the next riddle. Selena spotted a mask blending in with the rocks on the other side of the clearing. It was gray, and rough, and almost resembled armored plating. She turned it over to find the next riddle.

As you burn in the depths of hell, demons will spread your ashes. Charming. The guests searched the clearing, once again reaching a 50/50 split on which mask they thought it was. Selena swallowed. She volunteered to choose the mask. At least that way, whatever happened, she had no one to blame for herself.

Selena stared at the smooth, blank interior of the mask. She groaned as the woman approached her again. She didn’t know what was going to happen now, but she didn’t like the way the katana gleamed in the moonlight.

The woman pierced Selena in her stomach. For a brief moment, Selena felt hot, scorching pain. Then, she felt nothing.

She was floating. Or was she standing? She walked around the darkness as if she was walking through a room, but she couldn’t feel anything underneath her.

Selena instinctively reached for where she had been stabbed. Nothing. Not even a cut in the fabric. She sighed. It was just a hallucination, but everything felt so real. Is this how Vincent felt?

Something shifted in the darkness. Selena felt it more than she saw it. A presence that dwarfed her own, nearly suffocating her with its power. The darkness swirled and undulated like waves in the ocean.

“Hello, Selena,” a deep, old voice said, “I have been waiting to see you for a very long time.”

Selena could barely open her mouth to speak. Her mouth was dry as she tried to form words.

“W-who are you?” she finally asked. “How do you know who I am?”

The voice chuckled. “All in good time, little albatross. I have great plans for you.”

Selena felt the wind get knocked out of her as she fell onto solid ground. She fell to her knees, touching the grass as if it were made of gold. Selena never wanted to think about that creature ever again, even as it consumed more and more of her mind.

Selena heard a shot come from her right. She turned to see LeLe standing in front of her. Her eyes were wide, but LeLe quickly regained her composure.

“Selena, oh my god!” she shouted. “We finished the riddles, but the last one was for that chick’s masks, and we got it, but she started chasing us, and-”

LeLe was cut off by the shouts of the other guests echoing across the yard. LeLe ran to meet with them with Selena not far behind. Selena couldn’t help but wonder if LeLe saw the darkness like she had.

The two ran back into the lounge to find the others standing in the middle of the room, out of breath but none the worse for wear. Oli ran over to Selena and put his hands on her shoulders protectively as he scanned her body.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m not any worse,” Selena answered. She didn’t want to mention the creature living in the dark. She never wanted to even think about it again. “I’ll take that as a win.”

Oli nodded and turned back towards Joey and Eva. Eva held the fencing mask the woman in the clearing had been wearing in her hands. She fiddled with the inside as a key and a note fell out of the netting.

The note explained that the final key was found in Vincent’s most vivid hallucination. Unlike the others, this one would have deadly consequences. It would require a vote, and challengers would need to pick a partner of the opposite gender. The guests sighed. They knew this was inevitable, but it didn’t make it any easier.

“Guys, I don’t want to vote for anyone,” Joey said, “I don’t want to see anyone left die.”

“Yeah,” LeLe agreed. “I mean, at this point, I would probably rather vote for myself.”

They looked at each other. There was an idea. It would mean that they all had an equal chance of being in the challenge, of dying, but at least their consciences would be clean.

Each guest walked up and placed their own name into Arthur’s hat. As he shuffled the names, everyone clasped their hands together.

“Selena,” Arthur announced. She barely registered Oli squeezing her hand in comfort.

“And LeLe. Selena, since your name was drawn first, you will choose your partner first.”

“Oli,” she answered immediately. Even if it hadn’t been for the odd rules of the challenge, it would have been her choice. There was no one in that house that she trusted more.

LeLe tried to hide the face she was making as Joey squeezed her shoulder. Selena registered that by picking Oli, she had left LeLe with Joey. She didn’t know whether to feel optimistic about her chances or devastated at her friend’s.

The guests journey down into the basement, hopefully for the last time. LeLe and Eva held each other closely as they descended. They remembered what happened the last time they were down there. That first challenge seemed so long ago yet was rushing back at the same time.

They were not the only ones with sour memories. Selena walked the same steps she had descended in that horrible nightmare she had when this whole mess started. She knew now that it was more than a nightmare. It had to be. She steeled herself for what was going to happen at the bottom of the stairs.

The ungodly machine was no longer in the basement. As the walls flickered and changed, two wooden chairs came into view. Wires and electrical lines were connected to the restraints of the arms of the chairs. Selena’s heart stopped.

Selena and LeLe were to be hooked up to the electric chairs. Oli and Joey were going to have to play a game of demented ring toss to determine which one would make it out of the room alive. Each failed throw would result in another shock.

Eva helped Selena and LeLe get into their chairs. She made sure that the restraints were only as tight as they needed to be. There was a helplessness in her eyes that filled Selena with so much rage. None of them deserved this.

Oli and Joey lined themselves up to begin. The shocks probably weren’t going to be too bad, right? Selena rememberd getting shocked by the electrical sockets in her house once or twice as a child. It was more uncomfortable than-

She was wrong. She was so so so wrong. The first jolt of electricity sent her whole spine on edge. A scream escaped her lips of its own accord. LeLe responded in kind.

More and more rings were thrown, and more and more rings missed. The pulsing white pain seared through Selena’s entire body. She relished the brief reprieves when Oli got a ring to land properly. Or maybe he was just grabbing more rings. She couldn’t tell. All she was aware of was the pain.

This was it. She was going to die. Selena could taste the blood in her mouth mixing with the tears rushing down her face. It hurt so much. Selena’s body twitched uncontrollably. A loud scream pierced the night.

Selena’s heart continued to pound even as the shocks stopped. The restraints were thrown off her wrists, and someone gently grabbed her shoulders. Selena picked up a voice calling her name through all the ringing. Slowly, her vision returned, and she was face to face with Oli. His concern immediately melted into relief.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

She saw LeLe’s limp body sitting next to her out of the corner of her eye. The air stung with the smell of burnt flesh. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

Selena stood slowly and shakily. Her legs begged for rest, crumbling like jelly more than once. She had to rely on Oli to get up the stairs, but it didn’t matter. She refused to spend one more godforsaken moment in that basement.

The four returned to Vincent’s room, keys in hand. The madman was still standing in the same corner. It was unclear if he had even moved since they left.

“Vincent, we have the keys,” Joey announced.

Vincent’s eyes grew wide. “Don’t tease me,” he pleaded. Still, he turned around in the vain hope that he would receive his freedom.

Once all the keys were unlocked, Vincent shook the straight jacket off and threw it on the ground. He moved his arms slowly, working out the years-long stiffness that resided within. He turned back to them with a clarity in his eyes that had not been there before.

“Thank you,” he whispered. He walked over to Selena and gently placed something in her hand. “I have seen glimpses of your path, and I’m afraid that there is farther down the tunnel to go. Hopefully, this will do you more good than it did me.”

Selena felt the cold circular metal in her hand. The engravings on the outside were thin and intricate. She felt the button to the watch, but Vincent stopped her hand before she could open it, giving her a knowing smile. He then looked up, passed Selena, and his eyes hardened.

“I tried to warn you,” Vincent started. “I tried to warn you. The owner of this house is a monster!”

The guests gasped. Oli, Eva, and Selena turn to Joey, fearing that all their suspicions had been confirmed. But only Joey was following Vincent’s line of sight to the glaring butler standing behind them.

Arthur stomped forward, towering over Vincent. “That’s enough!” he shouted.

“You don’t control me anymore,” Vincent remarked with a smirk. He turned his attention back to guests. “If I were you, I’d run.”

They didn’t need to be told twice.

#escape the night #escape the night season 1 #etn #joey graceffa #my works #drawn to the dark #a nightmare to remember

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