by Rick Mofina
“The executioner is coming for you and there’s no escape!”
Struggling to distinguish the entrance to the next scene, Faith, Cal and Gage searched the cemetery for an exit in vain before they were motivated to look again by the sudden rattle of a revving chain saw.
“There, by the crooked tree!” Gage shouted.
The lid of an upright coffin had opened, inviting an escape just as the executioner materialized from across the graveyard. A huge man, face wrapped in a ragged, grotesque mask, held the saw high over his head, gunning the motor as he approached them.
“Let’s go!”
Gage ran through the coffin door, his parents behind him with the chain-saw maniac pursuing them.
They entered the final chamber where the floor was akin to a big plate, a flat, spinning wheel, large enough to hold a car. The room went pitch-black. Faith couldn’t see her hand in front of her face as the floor rotated. She couldn’t see Gage or Cal as the air exploded. Earsplitting, menacing metal music thudded in time with the sudden hyperflash of strobe lights, creating confusion and terror. In the chaos, Faith now glimpsed Gage and Cal—was that them?—moving on the far side of the spinning wheel.
Or was she seeing other people?
“Gage! Cal!”
The music roared and she failed to hear a response—if there was one—as the floor turned and turned, disorienting her. Through the strobes, she spotted half a dozen curtained portals just as the chain saw’s whine grew louder, alerting her to the fact the lunatic was in the room.
“Save yourself!” a recorded demonic voice boomed. “Choose your exit now, or perish!”
Faith sensed that the saw-wielding lunatic had stepped onto the wheel and had her in his sights. That saw better not be real, she thought before jumping to one of the curtained portals. Her heart skipped as the floor beneath her gave way and she fell onto a cushioned rubber slide that dropped in darkness for a few seconds before gently delivering her to the lighted, safe world outside.
Catching her breath, Faith stood, stepping aside as a teenage girl slid down the chute behind her. Blinking in the sunlight, regaining her composure, Faith looked around the landing zone of half a dozen chutes that webbed out to deliver visitors on a large air mattress.
“Hey!” Faith spotted and joined Cal, who’d exited at the farthest chute. “That was wild! Where’s Gage?”
Cal’s grin began melting as he looked at her, then around.
“He’s not with you?”
“No, I thought you had him?”
“No, I saw him with you.”
“Cal, where’s Gage?”
Faith and Cal searched the chutes delivering a thrilled survivor every few seconds. Gage would be next. He had to be next. The seconds grew to one minute as their hearts continued to pound. Two minutes passed, then three.
Time ticked by with no sign of Gage.
Copyright © 2018 by Highway Nine Inc.
LAST SEEN—available now wherever books are sold.
ISBN-13: 9781488099168
They Disappeared
Copyright © 2012 by Highway Nine Inc.
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