Puzzle House

Chapter 1

“…Hello?” A high pitched feminine voice said. Her voice was swallowed in the dark. “Is anyone else here?”

I was there. I don’t know how long I was there, but I was there… hearing her speak. I was too young and too frightened to speak up. That voice wasn’t familiar to me.

“Candace, are you still there,” that same voice asked in the dark. No one would have been able to see. It was as if you were in a black hole.

“Please?...Someone?” You could hear her starting to sob. I bit my tongue and kept quiet. I didn’t know if this was just another one of those tests that this place has set up.

My friends and I decided that it would be neat to go into this new “Puzzle House”. We originally thought that it was just going to be one of those bogus haunted houses. There were flyers and commercials all over the place to have people to come in. Little did we know that this wasn’t what we were going to expect.

I heard someone shuffle and I became a little more uneasy.

“Who are you?” a much deeper voice replied to the girl’s voice. It was such a long time before he replied, that I thought that there wasn’t anyone else in the room.

The girl gasped and immediately stopped sobbing, “Ebony. Tyler, is that you?”

“…No, my name’s Aiden.”

“….oh…do you know…wh...what’s going on?” Her sobs sounded like they were coming back.

“Hey, hey…Ebony, don’t cry. I’m sure everything is fine. Here, let me find you,” for as freaky as this situation, this Aiden person seems pretty calm when he talks.

“How…are you…going to do that? It’s too…dark,” Her words seemed kind of muffled.

“Just keep talking. I’ll follow your voice,” Aiden replied. I heard a shuffling in the distance.

“What do…I say?”

“Anything, like how you came here. Maybe we can figure out what is going on.” The floor began creaking. I hugged my legs tighter to my chest.

“I was with my friends…and then…then I wasn’t. I can’t remember…”

A sharp gasp was heard breaking up the conversation. “Ebony, I think I found you,” Aiden replied. I heard some more shuffling in the dark.

“What do you mean?” Ebony asked.

“I’m touching you aren’t I? This is your hand?” Aiden asked. “You don’t have to pull away.”

“No one is touching me.”

“Then who is this?”

The was a long silence in the room, followed by a bang. Suddenly, there seemed like several echoes of gasps in the room. One of which sounded more like a hiss.

“What was that?” Aiden replied.

“I…I just hit my head on something,” A new voice replied. It almost seemed as deep as Aiden’s but it had a much rougher tone to it.

Ebony immediately called out, “Tyler, is that you?” You could tell there was hope in her voice.

“No. Give up on the Tyler thing, Ebony. I’m Braxton.”

“Braxton! You are here too?” Ebony seemed thrilled.

“Yeah, stop making it sound like a huge deal. I just want to get out of this sinkhole.”

“Why didn’t you respond earlier?” She seemed mad now.

“Because, I think I just woke up…”