House Of Horrors

Chapter 10: Circus Games

Chapter 10:

"We have to find the way out of here," Hayley announced, and I could see the surge of determination in her tired eyes.

"What do you think we've been trying to do? Throw a god damn party?" Tristen asked sarcastically. Hayley shot him an exasperated glare, but Tristen ignored it and turned to look at where Ryan once stood.

"Ryan said we had to pass a test to get to the exit... but that could mean anything," Jeff stated knowingly, earning nods of agreement from all of us.

I noticed something then; we had begun to know Ryan so well, that we actually used his name. We didn't just say, 'that freaky dude'... we politely used his name, like he was just one of our friends.

"Well, let's just keep walking. I mean... we don't really have anything else," Nick stated, still wiping stray tears from his swollen eyes.

Dang, that boy must have really liked Lily. I mean, we all did, but he must have genuinely been in love with her. Of course, we'd had our suspicions of that; mostly Tristen, Hayley and I caught onto it, but we never said anything to our two blonde friends about it. I'm assuming Nick never said anything to Lily either, so he must've been feeling longing and guilt among other things.

Shoving back all my overwhelming emotions, I took a weary step forward.

Everyone was silent as we slowly walked on; I wasn't aware of where we were going, but it's not like we'd had a good sense of direction at any point in this trip.

Soon, the silent air around us was filled with a terrible sound. It was like screechy electronic dance music, and out of seemingly nowhere, an extremely ugly clown appeared right in front of us.

"Who wants to dance?" It asked, letting out a shrill laugh that sent a chill down my spine.

Cameron immediately turned around and grabbed a firm hold on my shaky hand. He started to run, forcefully dragging me behind him as I tried not to stumble over my own two feet. Nick followed, dragging Camilla much like Cameron was currently pulling me.

When I turned around slightly to make sure everyone was following, I was suddenly pushed hard into a wall. Pain shot up through my shoulder, where collided with the dingy wall.

The fresh wound was just barley bleeding, and when I glanced beside me, I noticed Cameron was forced against the wall too, cradling the side of his pale face where it contacted the hard wall.

The damn clown pushed us, rather harshly too.

When I looked up, he was staring down at me, a scary and ugly grin on his disturbing, painted face. The dance music blared out louder from speakers that I couldn't seem to spot, and the clown suddenly pulled me up by my shaky hands.

"Let's dance!" the clown demanded with a sickly playful tone, before roughly yanking my arms forward. I slammed harshly into his chest, and immediately clenched my green eyes closed. I could feel myself trembling with pure fear, mostly from the feeling of the demented clown's boney, blood-stained fingers on my smooth skin.

"Let her go you ugly bastard!" Cameron yelled out, as the red eyed clown began forcing my limp limbs to move to whatever awful, thrash song was playing around them.

I opened my eyes just in time to see Cameron holding a baseball bat that he didn't have before, and he swung it right at the violent demon clown.

The bat connected with its head, and wiped it clean off the clown's bloodied body. The head landed on the floor a few feet away, and I had to hold back vomit at the gory sight.

Blood was fucking spurting everywhere, but it was more of an ugly orange color and it smelled like moldy, rotted ravioli.

The worst part though, was that the when the clown's neck stopped bleeding as profusely, it was a pinkish flesh color.

"How did it stop bleeding so fast?" I shouted in horror, but I realized I didn't really need to know the answer.

The clown suddenly ran at us again, and I was shocked by that unexpected action to say the least. Its entire head was completely gone, yet it was still alive. This sent violent shivers running down my spine, and Cameron took my shaky hand to lead me out of the way.

We began to run down the hall again, and soon caught up with the others who were still desperately running.

I'm not sure when, but at some point, the terrifying clown stopped chasing us, so we all slowed down to a hesitant stop.

Taking in huge gulps of air, I took a second to catch my breath, because it was so ragged, I almost thought I might pass out. Tristen came over and wrapped his thin arms around me, giving me a tight hug that was much needed.

"We are fighting a losing battle," Camilla stated with a shaky voice, running her dainty hand through her long black hair. Nobody said anything about that, it was still too soon to give up hope, but I could feel the faith that we'd all get out alive slowly diminishing.

"No! No, we aren't... we can't give up yet! That's just what they fucking want!" Hayley argued, throwing her bruised arms in the air dramatically. She was about to go on about how we couldn't give up hope, I could see the familiar determined expression on her face, but Jeff abruptly butted in.

"Will you give it up? We obviously can't win! It's over! It's god damn over! The only thing we can do now is wait for them to kill each and every one of us," Jeff stated in a frantic, panicked tone.

I noticed hot tears starting to form in his tired eyes, so I walked over to comfort him a little. Again, nobody said anything in response. I was getting pretty used to the silence that followed when somebody said something hurtful yet brutally true.

About ten long minutes passed with nobody saying anything. Everybody was exhausted, even though Nick, Hayley, Jeff, Tristen, and I had taken the opportunity to lay down last night, nobody really slept well in this hell house.

I was thinking intensely about everything that's happened since we've been in here, trying to remember every little thing people said, everything thing we've seen, and every little thing we've walked past. I thought about when Collin showed up, and the shocking things he said.

'I know who's next'.

I shot up from my sitting position on the hard, dirty floor and gazed wide eyed at Collin. He stared back at me for a second, before confusion filled his tired green eyes.

"What?"

I continued to stare intensely at him, trying to figure out if that's what he really said.

"You said before.... that... that you knew who was next?" I finally choked out. It sounded more like a question than a confident statement, but I didn't care.

Understanding immediately crossed his solemn face, and he slowly stood up, nodding slightly.

"How?" I demanded softly, trying to read into all the horror behind his tired eyes. He thought it over for a second, before speaking in a strained tone.

"When I was first separated from Quil... I wandered around a bit. I walked down a hallway and entered some sort of classroom.... and there was a chalk board, that had a bunch of names on it. Nick, Tristen, You, Hayley, Jeff, Lily, Jacob, Brianna... and a couple I didn't really pay attention too. Brianna and Jacob's names were crossed off and I remembered you saying they were dead... so I knew why their names were crossed off. Then Lily's name was circled... so I figured she had to be next. Then that weird dude came in, and actually helped me find you guys." Collin explained.

Disgust was the only thing I felt. Not only did they have to torture and kill us, but they had to plan it out and make sure we knew we were all going to die?

".... Can you show us the room?" I asked slowly, and I could feel everyone suddenly turn to look at me. Collin's wide eyes immediately filled with fear, and I couldn't help but briefly wonder what he went through to find this mysterious room.

"I don't even know the way back to it," Nick's older brother admitted softly, fiddling with his cold fingers nervously. Quil patted his back in a brotherly manner, wearing a look of understanding.

Did Quil have to go through hell to find us too? I guess I hadn't thought of it much. I really didn't want to make Collin or Quil go through that again, but we needed to find that room; there might be a clue on how to get the hell out of here.

"Well... then I guess we will just have to start where you and Quil got separated."