CHAPTER SIXTEEN

16

The white walls faded back into a smoky abyss. The pain in my ankle was gone albeit my body was still sore. Danny was gone. The EKG was gone. The hospital bed was gone. I thudded onto my back with an oof and got up and dusted myself off.

What just happened?

“I should’ve listened to that kid,” I murmured to myself. “Should’ve never gone into this nefarious house.”

I got up. Dazed and confused. “DANIEL,” I called out terrified. I was all alone, “HELLO!!!” I called out for somebody, anybody to hear me, to get me out of this horrible place.

I was back in the smoky room with the three huge trees. The wall-less doors strewn about randomly. Right where I started. And Danny, nowhere to be found. I guess I was all on my own. I walked close to one of the doors, praying it wasn’t like the last.

“They’re each as bad as the last, if not worse.” A voice suddenly said from behind me.  A very familiar voice that I haven’t heard since my senior year.

“Olive?” I spun around quickly.

“Hey, Phe, it’s been a minute,” she smiled awkwardly, hands in her pockets, eyes diverted from mine.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “What are you doing here?”

“The same thing you are, checking out this haunted house.” 

“Oh,” I said, at a loss for words. 

Her cerulean eyes looked into mine, fear encased in them.

Her usually well-kept shiny black hair was wet and muddy, her pink, flower-covered romper was covered in mud. And she had shoes that looked like they'd been immersed in mud, which was weird ‘cause Olive always kept her shoes clean when we were in high school. I pointed to her attire, “What happened there?”

“When I opened the door to one of these weird rooms, I took one step and fell. I fell into a huge mud pit, and when I surfaced, I was stuck in the dirty room. The door was too high for me to reach; I jumped and jumped and still couldn’t get to the door. It was like two yards in the air, so I wandered around for a while, and here I am.” She shrugged and held her hands in an “I don’t know” kinda way. She looked down, and frowned, “I should’ve never gone into this haunted house yesterday.”

I looked at her confused, “You came in here yesterday?” 

“Yeah,” she glanced down at her rose gold plated watch, “I came in here around 8:00 p.m. yesterday, and now it’s 3:17 a.m.” Her eyes were grim, “I want out,” she said quietly. “Happy birthday by the way.”

“Thanks,” Oh, right, it's my birthday. I looked down and rubbed my foot against the back of my leg. “I can’t believe that you remembered,” I almost whispered.

She chuckled almost silently, “How could I forget? You were the most important person in my life for eight years. I couldn’t forget your birthday even if I tried.”

I smiled a quickly fleeting smile, “This was supposed to be the best birthday of my life. My twenty-first birthday. I was gonna ditch work and hit a bunch of bars with Danny, instead, I’m stuck in this horrible haunted house with who knows what way out.”

“I’m sorry, Phoenix.”

We stood there silently, awkwardly for a while, both of us looking at our feet.

“Hey, Olive,” a familiar voice said from behind me. “Long time, no see.”

“Hello, Daniel, yeah, it has,” she blushed, “you look good, Dan.”

“DANNY!” I grinned and turned around, Danny was standing right behind me. Where had he gone?

“Hey, Brownie, where’ve you been?” How many times was he going to say that to me in this place? “You grew wings, saved me from . . . an old lady falling on me from a football field away while I was stuck in something sticky, then you set me down, and flew away. Hey! Where’d your wings go?” He turned me around and patted my back.

My eyes got watery, “So I really did have wings?” I beamed.

“Of course you did, why would you think otherwise?” 

“No reason, it’s not important.” I thought back to the faux hospital room and thought back to . . . robot Danny? I remembered what he said to be before he malfunctioned, “YOU MUST FIND ELIZABETH JAYCE LOUIS BEFORE TIME RUNS OUT!” I wondered what that meant. How much time did we have left? And what would happen if we didn’t find her in time? 

Olive looked at us in confusion, “So y’all are still friends, huh?”

“Yeah, always and forever,” I held up my hand and stuck out my pinkie, the only way to know if this was the real Danny. My Danny. 

He linked.

I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding.

“Oh, my god, y’all still do that?” She laughed, “Y’all are so lame!” She joked; just like old times. “Y’all have been doing that since y’all were what, six?”

I hugged him tightly, squeezing his ribs. He hugged me back, groaned, and said, “Ya killin’ me, ya killin’ me!” I looked at Olive and nodded.

“Y’all are so weird, I don’t get why y’all aren’t married yet,” she laughed.

Both mine and Danny’s faces turned red.

“Where did you go?” I asked Danny.

“Uh, I told you, I had to call Eve, I told her that I didn’t think that it would work between us. That we live too far away from each other and that I can’t keep visiting Cali every month.” He held up his phone, “Used up the last of my battery on it.”

“How’d she take it?” I asked.

“She cried, which made me feel bad, I mean, we were together for like two years, I thought we could make it work.” 

I rubbed his back and told him that it was gonna be alright. He responded with, “I know that Brownie, I got you,” He winked at me, which made my brain melt, and for a split second, made me forget that we were in this wretched haunted house.

“Shall we proceed through this together?” I asked them both.

“Yeah, I think we shall,” Olive agreed.

“Agreed,” Danny said.

* * *

We walked near one of the doors, all three of us holding hands so we didn't lose each other, Danny was holding mine, and I was holding Olive’s. Danny held mine especially tight, making sure I didn’t leave like I did last time. Although, I gotta say; having wings was beyond awesome!

The next room we walked into was like a house, the floors were a dark brown, all the dark blue-black walls were water damaged, from what I could see, it looked like there were two floors. I felt like I was playing Granny (Granny is a jump-scare video game). I felt like Granny was bound to come out of one of those rooms any second.

The next thing I know, the door that led us into the room, slammed shut behind us, resulting in me and Olive jumping. Danny turned around and tried yanking the door open and it wouldn’t budge. Olive cried, “I want out, I want out!” I quickly covered her mouth.

“Whoa, this place looks just like the Granny game!” Danny’s eyes grew wide. Goosebumps formed on my arms.

“I was literally just thinking that,” I said, creeped out.

Then, an old man comes out.

Grandpa.

“Nonononononono,” I heard Olive quietly say, “Oh, my god, I hate this game so much, I don’t wanna play the real-life version,” she whimpered.

“Shush, Olive!” I whisper-screamed. “If you know anything about the game, I think you’d remember that GRANNY CAN HEAR EVERYTHING!” I almost used my vocal cords. “We gotta stay quiet,” I whispered.

“Alright,” I quietly said, “Now, from what I remember from the game, grandpa can’t hear very well, but he hits hard, and we have five days to GET OUT OF THIS HELL, well, we have five tries, if they see us, and hit us, we have four tries, you get the gist?” They nodded.

“I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I should’ve never come in here,” Olive quietly cried. 

Grandpa turned his head and headed into a different room, which gave us some time to find a way out. “I don’t know if Granny is playing in this game, but keep quiet in case she is,” I warned. 

Then I felt a hard thunk on the back of my head and hit the floor.

Everything went dark.