Rushed: All Fun and Games

by Brian Harmon

  As they stood there, unable to go forward or backward, the rats began to pour over the burning walls. Thousands of them swarmed them, closing in around their feet. Within seconds, they were climbing up their legs, scurrying up their backs, igniting their clothes.

  Flames enveloped them.

  And as they screamed and writhed in searing agony, the rats began to feast.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Eric opened his eyes and peered around. Just like the first time, the rats had vanished. He wasn’t being eaten. His flesh wasn’t burned. He seemed to be completely unharmed. It was like someone had pressed a reset button on a video game.

  None of it had ever happened. He was standing alone in the dark, still clutching his iPhone, wondering where he was now.

  He could once again hear the arcade. It was faint, but it was real, meaning he was back in the real world. But where?

  He turned the phone around and shined the light out at his surroundings.

  The first thing he saw was a massive, twelve-foot-tall, grinning clown.

  His heart stuttered in his chest. He let out a shrill scream and stumbled backward, tripping over something. He landed hard on his butt and sat there, staring up at the clown.

  Upon closer inspection, it was not a monster intent on feeding him to an endless army of flaming rats. It was another stupid decoration.

  Another look around revealed this place to be the indoor miniature golf course Karen mentioned. He’d tripped over one of the brick borders and was now sitting on the cheap, green carpet next to the first hole. The clown was merely a part of the décor.

  It was cute, now that he was looking at it for what it was. It was circus themed, like the rest of Bellylaugh Playland. On the second hole, there was a little circus tent you had to play through. The third hole took you through a lion tamer’s cage and into the crouching lion’s open mouth. Another hole had you putting around the legs of a nearly-life-sized dancing elephant.

  His cell phone rang, startling him again. It was Paul.

  “Hello?”

  “What just happened?” blurted Paul.

  Eric rose to his feet again and rubbed at the back of his neck. “That depends… Which part?”

  “Um… let’s see… How about the part where I was barbecued by flaming hell rats?”

  “Oh good, I was worried I only imagined that.”

  “I fucking felt myself burning to death!” cried Paul.

  “Once again, welcome to my world.”

  “Your world sucks!”

  He couldn’t really argue with that.

  “How many times has that happened to you?”

  “That was the first time I’ve been eaten by burning rats, actually. The last ones that ate me weren’t on fire.”

  Paul sighed. “I can’t even tell when you’re joking anymore.”

  “I’m not. Where are you?”

  “I’m on the second floor, behind the playland. I fell out of a fucking broom closet. How the hell did I even get in there?”

  “Displacement.”

  “What?”

  Eric shook his head. “It’s complicated.”

  “If you say so…” said Paul. “Where’re you?”

  “I’m in the old mini golf course.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “How should I know?”

  Paul was starting to sound flustered. He wasn’t very good at handling this sort of thing. He liked being in control of things. “Whatever. Just get your ass over here.”

  “I’ll be right there.” He disconnected the call and then looked down at the screen. “Anything?”

  NO DARK ENERGY. I THINK THE CLOWN MIGHT BE GONE FOR A WHILE

  He looked at the clock. It was already almost one. “That ate up a lot of time.”

  PRETTY SURE THAT WAS THE POINT

  He was sure she was right about that.

  YOU NEED TO WRAP THIS UP

  “I’d love to. Any idea what I should do next?”

  YOU NEED TO FIND ELIOT AGAIN

  Eric sighed. “Great…” Because that went so well last time.

  REMEMBER WHAT WILLIAM SAID. YOU NEED TO FIND A WAY TO CHANGE THE RULES OF THE GAME

  “What the hell does that even mean?”

  I DON’T KNOW. THIS IS YOUR THING

  “Right.” He shined his light around the room. The door was in the corner, by the check-in counter.

  As soon as he stepped out, he knew where he was. This was the hallway where he found the laser tag room. That had been on the left as he entered from the stairwell. Mini golf was behind the door on the right.

  He turned off the light on his cell phone and made his way down the hallway. If he couldn’t stop finding himself in the dark, he was going to completely drain the battery. Then he’d really be in trouble.

  He turned the corner and walked through the door. He made it a few more steps before he realized that everything was wrong. He should’ve been standing next to the stairwell, looking out into the arcade. Instead, he was looking down another long hallway like the one he’d just left.

  Thinking that he made a wrong turn somewhere, he turned around, but the door he just walked through was gone, too. There was nothing there now but more of the hallway he was standing in and a blank wall at the far end.

  And now that he was looking, it occurred to him that there were no doors in this hallway. There was no way in or out. He was trapped. And he couldn’t hear the arcade anymore. All he could hear was a faint muttering. A whimpering. A wretched, suffering murmuring.

  Didn’t he just get out of this mess? He cursed and looked down at his phone.

  DARKNESS

  “Big surprise…” said Eric.

  BUT IT’S WEAKER THIS TIME

  “Is that a good thing?”

  MAYBE

  “Just maybe?”

  HOW SHOULD I KNOW?

  Isabelle was great, but sometimes she could be hit-or-miss. It wasn’t her fault. Sure, she had a vast amount of knowledge about the weird, much more than almost anyone alive, he was sure, but her knowledge of the subject was limited to that of the people she met in her travels. The trapped people. And the hard truth of the matter was that none of those people would’ve ended up there if they’d really known anything about the weird. So she had her limits, like anybody else.

  But it was still frustrating sometimes. Why couldn’t someone just tell him what to do next and how to do it?

  He stared down the hallway, wondering what horrors were coming next. Maybe this time the clowns would be on fire.

  At least the lights were still on.

  That was a pleasant change of pace.

  But when he turned and looked the other way, he found that the horrors weren’t limited to the dark in this place.

  There, at the far end of the hallway, stood an old wardrobe.

  It wasn’t a horde of flaming rats. The appearance of a wardrobe where there wasn’t one previously probably wouldn’t register very high on most people’s lists of most frightening things they could encounter. But for Eric, it suddenly felt as though a large lump of ice had just dropped into his belly. He felt the blood drain from his face. His knees went weak.

  Not just any old wardrobe…

  He knew that wardrobe.

  He’d seen it once before, back when all of this began, in a ramshackle farmhouse sitting on a fissure between worlds.

  He took a step backward.

  Just a little over two years ago, the first real monster he ever faced, an unstoppable, unrelenting horror, burst from a wardrobe just like that one.

  No. Not just like it. It was the same wardrobe.

  He was sure of it.

  He took another step back, but his heel struck the wall behind him. He turned, panicked, and found that the other half of the hallway had vanished. He could go no farther. He was literally up against a wall.

  When he turned back again, he saw that the other end of the hallway, and the wardrobe with it, was now much closer. It was only about
twenty feet away.

  That was barely enough time to scream if the nightmare inside was the same one he encountered the first time. That thing was fast. He barely escaped with his life.

  This time, there was nowhere to run, no one to save him.

  No. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. It was just the clown again, screwing with his head. There was no way that wardrobe was here now.

  Even if it was, surely the golem wouldn’t still be inside it. Right? After all, the man who put it there was dead. Without him, it probably vanished.

  Right?

  Who the hell was he kidding? He had no idea how that sort of thing worked.

  With a slow, ominous creak, one of the doors, the one on the right, began to slowly open.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Eric pressed his back against the wall.

  His heart was racing. His stomach was twisted into a burning knot. First clowns, then rats and now the damn wardrobe? What was it with this place? It was like he’d died and gone to hell.

  “Isabelle…?”

  But when he looked down at his phone, she wasn’t there.

  “Isabelle?”

  Nothing.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  She always answered him. Only rarely had anything ever blocked their connection. Something was wrong.

  He lowered the phone and returned his attention to that slowly opening door.

  It wasn’t the same wardrobe. This wasn’t the way it happened before. It didn’t open slowly the first time. The doors flew open without warning, a supernatural equivalent to a steel trap.

  And yet, in some strange way, there was something even more terrifying about this long and gradual reveal.

  But as gravity took over and the door swung the rest of the way open, he saw that there was nothing there to fear. The wardrobe was empty.

  Except of course for anything that might be hiding behind the second door…

  The cell phone buzzed in his hand. He lifted it and looked at the screen. The text message display was up, but there was no message. It was blank.

  He looked up at the wardrobe again. Something was there that wasn’t there before. An unnatural shadow crowding behind the closed door. A brief, creeping movement near the handle.

  The cell phone buzzed again. Again, there was no message.

  Before he could lower it, it buzzed again, with the same result.

  He didn’t understand why it was doing that. Was it broken? Did it have some kind of virus? Was that what was keeping Isabelle from talking to him in this desperate moment?

  When he looked up again, there were small, white fingers holding onto the closed door, as if a very pale child were standing inside, clutching it.

  As he watched, blood began to drip from the bottom of the wardrobe. It started as a single trail oozing down the wooden frame, but it quickly grew into a steady drip. Then it was pouring. A crimson puddle swelled beneath it and began to run across the tile floor, reaching toward him like a red, gleaming hand.

  The cell phone buzzed at him again. This time, the text read, I’M HERE

  “Isabelle!”

  DON’T LOOK AT IT!

  “What?”

  There was a loud click as the second door unlatched and began to open.

  The blood was pouring out of the wardrobe faster now. That bloody hand was still moving toward him.

  He still had his back against the wall with nowhere to go.

  The cell phone rang. He accepted the call and pressed it to his ear. Immediately, Isabelle’s voice blurted out, “Don’t look at it! Close your eyes!”

  But he didn’t want to close his eyes. If he closed his eyes, he wouldn’t be able to see what was coming out of the wardrobe. He wouldn’t be able to protect himself.

  “You have to trust me! You’re not meant to see what’s in there!”

  The door creaked on its hinges as the door slowly swung open. He saw that dark shadow looming behind it. And he saw other things, too. A glint of white flesh. A flutter of fabric, dirty and tattered. A once pretty little dress…

  That bloody hand on the floor was almost at his feet.

  “Now, Eric!”

  Somehow, Eric did as she commanded and closed his eyes, blocking out whatever horrors followed.

  “Don’t you dare open them!” said Isabelle. “No matter what you hear! No matter what you feel!”

  “What’s happening?”

  The wardrobe door creaked all the way open, the grinding hinges digging at his ears like rusty drill bits.

  He had to squeeze with all his strength to fight the urge to peek. His horrid imagination leapt to action, insisting that a small, dead girl, about a million times more terrifying than the one from The Ring, was even now shuffling toward him

  “It’s not real,” Isabelle assured him. “It’s only an illusion. But you can’t look at it. You have to keep your eyes closed. If you open them, you lose. Do you understand me? Everybody loses!”

  He clearly heard the sound of footsteps moving toward him on the tile. Whatever it was, it was no longer inside the wardrobe.

  His heart was pounding. He was actually shaking with fear. It felt like he might puke at any second.

  “What is it?” he asked, his voice shrill.

  “Something you’re not meant to see. Not now. Probably not ever. You have to trust me on this.”

  He did trust her. He trusted her with his life.

  Step…

  Step…

  Step…

  It wasn’t the sound of a heavy shoe striking the floor. It was the sound of wet, bare feet, the sound you made at the pool on your way back to the locker room, dripping wet.

  He clutched the phone tighter in his hand. His other hand he balled into a fist and squeezed as hard as he could.

  Something touched his foot. Not blood. He wouldn’t have felt blood. This felt like little fingers dancing across the top of his shoe.

  Never in his life had he faced a test of sheer will like this. It was taking everything he had not to look at the horrors that were closing in on him.

  “Listen to me,” said Isabelle. “Focus on my voice. Can you do that?”

  He nodded, although to be completely honest, he wasn’t entirely sure if he could.

  Step…

  “I’m what’s real,” said Isabelle.

  Step…

  “I’m the only thing that’s real.”

  Those tiny fingers were creeping up his ankle now.

  “Everything else is a lie.”

  Step… The thing from the wardrobe was right in front of him. It could reach right out and do anything to him and he’d be powerless to stop it.

  “Everything you think you hear and feel right now is a lie,” Isabelle assured him.

  Those first fingers were creeping up his shin. It felt like there were hundreds of them.

  “Say it,” said Isabelle. “Tell me it’s a lie.”

  Eric tried to speak, but his voice didn’t want to work. His throat was locked tight.

  “Say it.”

  They didn’t feel like fingers anymore. They felt like bugs. And they were crawling up his other leg now.

  “Say it.”

  “A lie…” croaked Eric. He didn’t sound very confident. His voice was cracked and shrill with terror.

  “What?” urged Isabelle.

  A small hand closed around his wrist. It felt cold and unnatural.

  “It’s a lie…” he squeaked. “Everything I hear and feel is a lie.”

  “Don’t open your eyes.”

  He nodded again.

  “If you open your eyes, you’ll fail.”

  “I won’t open my eyes…”

  The bugs were crawling up his thighs now. The sensation had grown from a tickle to a prickle.

  “If you fail, all those children will die.”

  “I won’t open my eyes,” he said again, more firmly this time.

  The small hand around his wrist was tugging on him.

/>   “If you fail, your brother will die.”

  “I won’t open my eyes.”

  The small hand let go of his wrist and pulled on his shirt instead. A small voice, barely audible over the pounding of his own heart, whispered, “Please help me…”

  That might’ve made him open his eyes anyway, regardless of what Isabelle said. It was a child begging for help. How could anyone ignore that? But that hand that held his shirt felt so cold.

  Unnaturally cold…

  “Holly will die,” said Isabelle, her tone firm.

  As the bugs rose above his waist, the sensation became like pins and needles.

  “Karen will die,” warned Isabelle.

  “I won’t open my eyes!” cried Eric.

  Two hands were pulling on his shirt now.

  “Help me…”

  Please let this be over soon, he thought. As those cold, eerie hands pulled on him, he thought he’d rather be devoured by flaming rats a hundred more times than spend even one more second with whatever Isabelle so desperately wanted him to not see.

  “Focus on me,” said Isabelle. “Focus on my voice.”

  The pins and needles spread across his body. It was becoming a new sensation now, one that was harder to describe. It was a slimy sort of feeling, and yet also sort of scratchy. It was cold and yet it burned, too.

  “Focus on the truth.”

  Suddenly, he became convinced that it wasn’t something crawling around on his body after all. It was something crawling around under his skin!

  The thought made him shudder so hard his knees nearly buckled and spilled him onto the bloody floor.

  “I’m what’s real,” said Isabelle.

  Whatever was attached to those small hands began to climb his shirt. His collar stretched tight around his neck. Cold, little feet dug into his thighs then his hips. A heavy weight pulled down on him.

  “I’m the only thing that’s real.”

  If that’s what Isabelle said, then that’s what he believed, but he couldn’t deny that the dead-child-thing climbing him like a piece of playground equipment was a remarkable simulation. He could feel an awful face hovering just in front of him, staring at him, willing him to open his eyes and look at it. It wasn’t just his imagination. It was real. It was right there.

  And it had no breath…