The Secret Door (#Wattys2016)

Chapter V The Room of Doors

Unlike what Alice thought, there is no cupboard behind the door, only pitch darkness, darkness so dense that no light penetrates through it. Don tried shining his flashlight but the darkness merely swallowed the beam of light.

"I wonder what's in there," asked Van. He stares at the open doorway expecting some strange creature or a supernatural entity sticking out a clawed hand.

"Don't go there, Van. I don't reckon it's safe," Alice warned.

"Looks like it's some sort of entrance to an abyss," Cara suggested.

"What do you think guys, shall we go now," Van said, and three pairs of hands pulled him away from the doorway.

"You are not going young man," Alice nagged.

"What if something dangerous is lurking there?"

"Don, if something is in there it should have come for us when we opened the door," Van explained.

"Hey it's Ana!"

Everyone turned at the doorway after Cara said those. And even through the darkness, they could see Ana at a distance entering an unseen corridor.

"SHE GOT TO GET OUT OF THERE," Don bellowed. He drops Van and bolted into the doorway.

"Hey wait up," Van shouted. He got up and quickly went after Don.

Cara and Alice look at each other, their faces incomprehensible.

"Boys," Alice muttered, and they dived into the darkened hallway.

And Kirsten is the only one that's left. As a top student, she wasn't supposed to do stuffs like this or be involved with people like them. But what's the use of turning back now if she didn't know the way. A mouse passes near her feet, and Kirsten freaks out.

"Wait, I'm coming!" She screams. She closes her eyes and charges into the open doorway.

Van and the rest are expecting nothing but darkness. To their surprise, they are now in a spacious hallway, more like an old-fashioned tunnel. Unlike the dingy hallway where they came from, the tunnel lacks dirty floor and cobwebs. The walls and the arched ceiling are made of large slabs of granite.

"I didn't know there is a place like this in school," Van said, eyes gazing blankly at the ceiling.

"I don't think we're still in school."

"You're right Cara, the school can't hold something as vast as this," Alice replied. This tunnel is a long one, so long that it simply stretches into the darkness.

"This can't be real," Kirsten muttered to herself. Everything she discovered today is hard to digest as if reality had distorted itself.

"We don't need a flashlight here," Don said while stowing his flashlight away in his back pocket.

"Yeah, because there are candles above us..."

"You mean floating tongues of light Van," Cara added.

And what Van thought as candles are actually tiny flames that actually float in the ceiling. The frightened Kirsten let out a tiny squeak.

"Please tell me we are dreaming," said Van, his head swimming and turning. He will never watch another fantasy movie again!

"Where's the entrance?" Kirsten shrieked. They look behind and only saw a solid wall.

"We're trapped."