Escape the Night (S1): "It All Comes Crashing Down"

Did Someone Call For An Exorcist? Part 1

"You guys ready?" Matt whispers.

"Yeah." Tim, for once in his life, has a serious expression on his face. 

"Let's do this, man."

 Matt, reads the invocation. His voice is oddly soothing, and listening to him smooths the frazzled edges of my otherwise anxious nerves. 

"With the thread of the crimes of your own design, I bind your evil seven times."

Demon whispers. Oh god, those are demon whispers. The artifacts are glowing, the room is getting darker, there's freakin' demons whispering to them, and now one of the artifacts just fell over for no reason. Something's wrong.

"I bind you from behind, I bind you from before, that you hurt my people nevermore. I bind you from the left. I bind you from the right."

Another artifact topples over, hitting the ground with a sickening thud. Oli flinches. Eva screams. Sierra barely manages to stifle a scream of her own as she sits in the center. 

"I bind you by day, and I bind you by night. I bind you from below. I bind you from above." Matt continues. 

The third artifact falls. The whispers grow louder, threatening to drown out Matt's tranquil voice. To make matters worse, thick black clouds descend upon the group, i put my hands over my ears. 

"I bind you with your own evil within. So let this magic unfold. Goddess of the darkest night, bind the presence that haunts this home in thy sacred fires of eternity." 

The clouds depart. The lights return. YouTubers straighten in their seats, their eyes shimmering with a nervous hope. Sierra trembles. Lele frowns. Tim looks like he's doing yoga or something.

And Matt...well, Matt looks glad it's finally over. It is over.

Right?

Joey breaks the silence. 

"Did we do it?" And then, the darkest, most disturbing laughter I've ever heard in my life. It sniggers in spine-tingling tones, its voice low and sinister, sending shockwaves of fear across the group.

"What was that?" Oli exclaims. Eva's voice is a string of anguished gasps. 

"That's not—we didn't do it—that sounds like the devil!"

"Guys..." Joey stares at the floor. "I don't think it worked."

At this point, Matt tells me he wants to bang his head against the nearest hard surface, same. 

"Did we read the map the right way?" he asks, hoping that our failure is the result of a careless mistake. Maybe one of the artifacts is in the wrong place. Or maybe they used too much sand. Or maybe—

"Yes!" insists Joey. "It's totally fine!"

Oli's staring at the map as if it's an especially hard geometry test. 

"We did everything right."

So we did it, we followed the directions. For all intents and purposes, this ritual should've worked. And yet, here we are, still stuck in the 1920s, no closer to safety than we were before.

"Do you know," Matt snaps, his fingers curling into fists, 

"how much time has been spent just to find these stupid artifacts?" 

At least Tim is still trying to keep a positive spin on things.

 "Okay, but what if there's something in here that we're missing? What if there's another clue? What if they just wanna play with us more?"

"Yeah." Joey gets up. "Let's look for it."

Sierra, who's been oddly quiet for the past several minutes, pushes over the artifact in front of her. 

"Waste of time!" she shouts, tears in her voice.

"I'm so tired," Lele complains.

"Hey." Lele's whisper is louder than any other whisper in recorded history. 

"Sierra. It's fine. We're gonna be fine." But Sierra stares straight ahead, barely acknowledging her friend's existence. 

"Are we?"

Dammit. I think we broke her. Before Lele can respond to that, Joey points to a weird black box hidden in the fireplace. 

"What's that?"

"That's new," says Eva, who's once again morphed into Miss All-Business-All-The-Time. 

"Pull it out."

So we do, and lo and behold, we find our next clue. 

"A key," Joey mutters, staring into the box. 

"There's a key and a note." Great. More notes. This should be fun.

"I've cast out demonic spirits and seen the devil himself, but nothing could prepare me for what I found here. This is truly the house that evil built. It haunts my every moment, and as the days pass, I see more innocent lives devoured in its terrible mouth.

I am trapped in the basement until I can find release from this evil." I read off. 

I'm confused. Someone's been trapped in the basement this entire time? That makes no sense. 

"I think we should go to the basement," says Joey.

"Okay." Eva shrugs. "Let's go."