Welcome to the Madness

One: A Poor Graduation Party

 

IT WAS HARD not to be intimidated by something when one was sitting down, Ebony thought. Even if she were eight feet tall and standing on a ladder, she was positive the house sprawled before her would still look like a monstrosity. The siding, the sprawling porch, the gables, the three-stories of stacked pale stones, a black roof peaking over the top. A three-car garage that looked like it could be a gaping maw. This place was isolated, eerie, and gave her a chill in the middle of a warm May evening.

“’Vory, it’s perfect,” Ebony breathed, pressing her nose against the car window as her sister pulled into the driveway behind two other cars.

“I know. Not so nervous about tonight now, are you?” her sister said, too smug about this to chide Ebony not to use that nickname.

“No, really, Ivory, this place is going to be brilliant—how in the world did you find it?” Ebony asked. Ivory parked the car and leaned across the console, resting half on top Ebony to look out the window with her.

“I didn’t, it was all Elle. You remember Elle? Her brother told her about it. People call it ‘Maestro’s Cabin’. I think it’s a serious haunted house in the fall—the kind where you have to sign your life away on a waiver. During the summer, though, you can rent it out if you know the right people. Elle thought it would be perfect for an ‘unusual’ grad party, she said.”

“Maestro’s Cabin?” Ebony repeated. She and Toby were usually up-to-date on the best of America’s haunted houses. They’d recently brushed up on their knowledge, too, for their upcoming “touring America” trip, but even while exploring the most obscure webpages, Ebony’d never heard of it.

“Are we going to be treated to some haunting Mozart?” she teased.

“Ha. Ha.”

Ivory sat back up straight and gave her little sister a stern look before pulling down the vanity mirror and giving herself a final once-over. Ebony was content to sit and wait, fiddling with her charm necklace—a little stone turtle her parents had brought back from their vacation in Jamaica last spring.

“…Do you think I should go by ‘Kim-Ly’?” Ebony asked, suddenly nervous.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ivory insisted, her words a bit garbled as she fixed her lipstick. “Just use ‘Ebony’. I go by Ivory, and no one seems to mind. They’ve all gotten used to it, just from saying it and thinking it over and over.”

“I kno-ow,” Ebony whined, once again playing her part as the baby of their friend group. “But people are gonna be weird about it!”

Ivory shot her a sideways look and pointedly snapped the lipstick cap . Sometimes Ebony thought it was too easy to  trigger her sister’s “Mama Ivory” mode. And when she opened her mouth again, of course, she had her “lecture” tone engaged.

“Eb, look. Your name is Ebony, it’s on your birth certificate, right after ‘Kim-Ly’. If anyone’s breaking social norms in a politically incorrect manner, it’s me, for not going by ‘Izabella’ like a good white girl.”

“But I  nicknamed you ‘Ivory’! Because of your hair!” Ebony complained.

“Yeah, and it stuck and I like it. So nice try, but it’s not your fault if other people have a problem; it’s their problem…Besides, everyone seems to agree ‘Izabella’ doesn’t suit me,” Ivory said with a roll of her eyes.

“Well, cuz it doesn’t,” Ebony said.

Ivory had gone back to fixing her hair and face. Apparently, her part wasn’t straight, because she had her head tilted down at a weird angle as she tried to look in the mirror and sort out the hairs that wanted to curl in the wrong direction. Of course, she continued her lecture the entire time. Once you got Ivory going, it was impossible to pacify her until she’d said everything she wanted to.

“Besides, when you did that practice-teaching thing over winter break, none of the kids cared about your name. They just called you ‘Miss Ebony’ and it was adorable. Because before adults screw them up, kids don’t care about that sort of thing. So relax. Who cares what other people think? You’ve got, like, an army of seven-year-olds who would defend you to their last breath.”

Ebony had to smile at that. She  wished that she didn’t have this type of social anxiety when it came to meeting other Millennials. Toby and Saffron would be here, too, and the four of them had all grown up together. But big groups of new people, especially in this day and age, liked telling Ebony about how inappropriate her name was for a person of color.

People always seemed to bring the phrase up in tandem with her unusual name. And then she always had to give the explanation: she was adopted, and her Vietnamese parents had chosen her “American” name before they put her up for adoption. Her name was Kim-Ly Ebony Lyre, and, yes, her skin had color to it, like most things did. Yes, her Russian sister was also adopted, but as far as Ebony remembered from kindergarten, white was also a color. And regardless, she and Ivory were still sisters

 “There we go. Fixed it,” Ivory said suddenly, slamming the vanity mirror back up and startling Ebony out of her reverie.

In about a second, Ivory had popped the driver’s side door, stood, and straightened her clothes. Light blue dress to complement her shoulder length white-blond hair, brown accessories and belt to match her dark brown eyes, and silver rings for her cool skin tones. Ivory was almost always coordinated. She was a petite woman, only about 5’2”, but with her three inch heeled sandals, she was an inch taller than Ebony’s “average height”.

Ivory brushed car lint from herself, then leaned back in to grab her purse. “Coming?” she challenged, and then slammed the door shut before Ebony could reply.

Hurrying to catch up with her sister, Ebony’s shoes tapped out a rapid clack-clack on the stone walkway up to the wide front porch. For someone with such little legs, Ivory sure moved fast. Ebony followed her sister, the extra fabric at the bottom of her jeans swishing about. She had what some people called a unique sense of style, but she didn’t mind. When it came to something like clothes, people were perfectly entitled to their opinions. She just happened to think that flared, bell-bottom jeans should have never gone out of style.

Ivory said that was because she had skinny thighs. Ebony honestly had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

Of course, what she really wanted to be wearing to a party was something fancy. Elegant. Something she could wear with sky-high heels and feel like a lady. Those sorts of things might be slowly becoming old-fashioned, but Ebony decided she’d prefer a high-class black-tie event to a “casual get-together” that somehow had over twenty people on the invite list. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she did well with kids, and older adults, but had a hard time casually socializing with people her own age.

After pounding on the door to announce themselves, the Lyre sisters waited on the porch, the late summer sun setting behind them. They were perhaps forty minutes from the college campus, on the outskirts of an unfamiliar city. Amongst the FOR SALE signs and concealing fences of trees, Ebony watched a black cat scampering in the dirt of an old garden, pawing at bug. 

“It’s quiet out here,” Ebony observed. “Peaceful…It’s kinda nice.”

“But isolated,” her sister shuddered, looking around. “If you called the police out here, it would probably take them half an hour to arrive…I bet they only come this far when the haunted house is open.”

“Eh…Probably not, actually,” Ebony said. “Most haunted house events, when you sign those waivers, you pretty much put yourself in the hands of whoever’s running it, so even if you get hurt, it’s not like you can charge them for it.”

A momentary silence fell between them.

Ivory looked her little sister over and tisked. “Your hair’s coming out of your braid…Let me fix it?”

“I can do it,” Ebony insisted, already pulling out her hair ties. She liked having long hair, and the way it could brush all the way down to her hips when it fell loose. But sometimes that meant re-braiding it every few hours so Ivory wouldn’t try to “fix it”.

“…What are you and Saffy gonna do when Toby and I tour the most haunted places of America?”

Ivory shrugged. “I don’t know. Hang out in the hotel. Go swimming. Make some calls about setting up job interviews…”

“Ew.”

“Hey, in two years, you’ll be stuck in the same spot,” Ivory warned. “College doesn’t last forever.”

Ebony shrugged. She figured it would be easier to get a job teaching than to get into politics, like Ivory wanted to.

The door opened while Ebony was still trying to finish her braid, and she awkwardly looked as if she was trying to air out her armpits.

“He-y!” A girl with red-fringed blond hair squealed, leaning forward to give Ivory a half-hearted hug. “You made it, great!”

“Nice find, Elle,” Ivory admitted. “The Sister approves.”

Elle looked confused for a second, as if she’d forgotten a previous conversation, but recovered. “And this must be the Sister?”

“Yep, this is Ebony,” Ivory said before Eb could speak for herself.

“Great! The more the merrier,” Elle said, and Ebony got the strangest feeling that her presence hadn’t been entirely anticipated. “Just one rule,” Elle added, and held up a wicker basket with several cell phones piled up inside.

Ivory scoffed. “What?...You’re one to talk; your phone’s practically glued to your hand half the time.”

“I know that,” Elle said, just a little too sweetly for Ebony to feel comfortable. “That’s exactly why we’re doing this! So people can socialize and not be on their phones the whole time!”

“What if there’s an emergency?” Ebony blurted, thinking about what Ivory had said earlier about the police.

The look Elle gave her made her feel like a second-grader who just figured out there was a such thing as a stupid question.

“Sweetie, I’m not locking them in a safe, m’kay? If for some bizarre reason we need the phones, they’ll be right here…I mean, you’re not that attached to it, are you?”

Ebony put her phone in the basket.

She followed her sister and a very smug Elle back into the house and toward the dull roar of 20+ people trying discuss a dozen different things all at once. It was a bit daunting to be the last guests to arrive. Ebony knew that the adult thing to do would be to walk around, introduce herself to a couple of people, and try to join some conversations. But the moment Ivory handed off the keys and ditched her to jump into that mosh pit of conversation, Ebony defaulted to seeking out their shared best friends.

After a little hunting, she located the duo and threw herself down onto an old sofa next to Toby, who’d spread himself out across it as much as possible as if to deter anyone from joining him. Anyone else would think he was being antisocial, but Toby was just like that; he wouldn’t understand that his body language was a bit aggressive.

Toby was of average height for a young American man, but maintained a rather lanky build thanks to a speedy metabolism that seemed to stretch him out. Additionally, his hair seemed to grow up instead of out, making him look even taller--and in perpetual need of a haircut. Lately, he’d been styling his blond mop into a sort of rock-band mess that made him look younger than twenty-two.

“Tired of everything already?” Toby mused, completely at ease as he sipped his beer. “I thought you’d like this place, ‘Bony.”

“I do…Kinda,” Ebony admitted, leaning closer so he could hear her properly. “…There are a lot more people here than I thought there would be.”

“Your sister’s popular. She’s got everyone wrapped around her finger.”

“Yeah, only because she can remember their aunt’s dog’s birthdays,” Eb said. “I don’t get it—how does she enjoy this sort of thing?” After all, Ebony was the peppier sister. Wasn’t she supposed to be the socialite?

“Like I said,” Toby shrugged. “She’s the queen, they’re the worker bees.”

 “Maybe you should try putting a little more effort in,” Saffron finally spoke up. She was seated cross-legged on the huge coffee table in front of them. The position made her seem even younger than Toby, and being ridiculously short and petite didn’t help. Saffron was like an afro’d bag of bones on her worst day, and close to a miniature model on her best. She didn’t have an eating disorder—she could eat Toby under the table—but she was incredibly picky.

“Easy for you to say,” Ebony retorted. “You don’t have the memory of a goldfish.”

“It’s okay, ‘Bony. You just get overwhelmed,” Toby claimed. “…You can always remember kids’ names just fine.”

Ebony shrugged, watching as Saffron picked at the laces of her wedged heels. She noted both her friends had been drinking at least a little, and wished more than ever that she was older. It wasn’t that she expected to like alcohol that much, but it was a social thing, and she always felt left out because of it. Toby had offered to be designated driver once, to let her have fun, but Ebony had declined; it was, after all, technically against the law.

Saffron had snickered “lawful good”, and that had been that. As far as Ebony knew, neither of her best friends thought much about the fact she was two years younger than they were. Most times, Ebony didn’t, either. It was just scenarios like this that reminded her. The weird thing was, if she was at some fancy party, Ebony felt like she’d be okay drinking champagne, or something light like that. But in a setting like this, she knew she’d feel guilty. It was a college grad party, after all. By the time they left in the early morning, she’d probably be driving home two very drunk best friends and one decently-tipsy older sister.

“…Do you ever feel like…We just haven’t found our people yet?” Ebony asked out loud.

Toby raised an eyebrow at her and Saffron snorted.

“You know what I mean! Like…There’s gotta be more people we’d gel with, right? There are tons of people in the world, and only so many different opinions to have…I just want to find people out there who’ll bring excitement and adventure and stuff.”

“Honey, you just gotta stop bein’ so damn picky,” Saffron said.

Toby was more sympathetic. “What, you wanna ditch these guys?...I’ve only had one beer, Eb. I could drive you back to campus. We can say you just stopped in to say hello, but have more packing to do before our trip.”

Saffron gave him a stern look. “Tobias Jeremy Myers, don’t enable her.”

“Ivory would be disappointed,” Ebony admitted. “And I have all day tomorrow to finish packing…I just gotta put some things in storage and figure out what I want to bring for the Fourth of July. We are going to be in New York for the Macy’s fireworks show, aren’t we?”

“That’s the game plan so far,” Toby said. “We’ve got fifteen weeks to visit fifty states. I say doable.”

“Right, so, I’m gonna need something festive.”

“Just shop along the way; that’s what I’m doing,” Saffron claimed.

“Not all of us get Daddy’s credit card for the summer,” Toby drawled.

Saffron didn’t miss a beat. “No, just a bequest from your dead grandparents with the instructions to tour all fifty United States.”

“…Touché, touché…” Toby shrugged. It was largely thanks to what his very patriotic grandparents that they were able to do this. Ebony would have stayed behind and gotten a summer job, like a responsible 19-year-old college student, but how often did one get that sort of opportunity?

“So,” Saffron concluded stubbornly, “zip it, Myers. And Eb, I’ll help you pack later. Stay at the party, okay? You need to learn to mingle, or else you’re going to be mighty lonely for the next two years.”

“…I’ll work on it,” Ebony promised, and Saffron gave Toby a triumphant smirk. Since they’d all been friends since grade school, she should’ve known better.

“Hey, Bony,” Toby said deliberately, still looking right at Saffron. “Wanna explore the rest of the house?”

She thought he’d never ask. Toby had been Ebony’s partner in crime since childhood when it came to all things creepy. They’d been the kids willing to stand for hours in front of the bathroom mirror, rehashing every version of the Bloody Mary myth they knew, only to be disappointed when nothing happened.

“Let’s go,” Ebony said, hopping off the couch and pulling at his arm. “Let’s make a scale, and rate the creepiest houses we visit…Saffy, wanna come?”

Saffron wrinkled her nose. “That couch alone probably has enough bacteria to wipe out the human race, and you want me to walk through the rest of the house? No, thank you.”

The curse of a paranoid biochem major.

“Have it your way,” Ebony replied. “It’ll be just Toby and me, then. Maybe we’ll even create a scandal!” she added, as if anyone would care.

Toby laughed. Ebony knew that she was one of the few people who make him do that, and she prided herself on it. It wasn’t as if she was interested in him in that way—certainly not. She’d admittedly had a crush on him her freshman year of high school, before she’d realized that she was content to just stay friends.

But even so: she liked being the one who could make the funny guy laugh.

“Fine then, Femur,” Toby said. He’d always liked to play on her nickname, picking different bones to call her. “Lead the way.”

They slipped out into the foyer, away from the others, and Ebony suddenly realized how dark it had gotten. It had begun to rain outside, as the forecast had predicted, though the thunderstorm had yet to fully break, and Ebony shivered as they walked further into the dark. But in a few moments, she was less interested in their grim surroundings and more curious as to why their group had confined the party to the one—though granted, spacious—family room when this house was so large and empty. There was still carpeting in many of the rooms, with some generic furniture here and there all covered in sheets, but other than that, there was nothing personal. No old coffee pots left behind, or notes to pick up groceries or kid’s drawings.

It was intriguing, in an eerie sort of way. Ebony wondered what story the creators of this haunted house were thinking of when they’d put it all together. She’d have to find someone to come back with in the fall, when it was all set up for spooks.

Toby slid his obnoxiously large key ring out of his pocket—riddled with chains and keys for just about everything except the car he didn’t own—and flicked on the tiny but powerful flashlight hooked there. He shined it around the room, startling a few spiders on the ceiling, and then panned down to the floor to illuminate the tiny dust clouds the two of them kicked up as they moved.

“This is neat,” Ebony said in what felt like an obligatory whisper as she ran a finger along an old piano she’d just uncovered. “Remind me again why the party’s only in the one room?”

“That was the only one with working electricity,” Toby replied. Guess someone had forgotten that the place was being rented out to a gaggle of recent college grads.

They walked around the spacious first floor, which included a music room, living room, sunroom, breakfast nook, dining room, kitchen, a full bathroom, a butler’s pantry, a sewing room complete with an antique 1850’s Singer, a small ballroom, at least five freakishly large closets, and two large spare rooms that were so empty they gave Ebony the chills. Still, she liked the creepy-crawly aspect of it all. She and Toby always had been the only two of their friend group to appreciate good scares. Ivory tended to avoid those sorts of things and Saffron thought they were disgusting and too scary, which made Toby and Ebony the de facto experts on the subject.

Besides, Ebony liked old things. There was something comforting about them, as if they’d been there for ages and would never move.

She and Toby made their way back to the front of the house, where a grand staircase lay in wait. “Second floor, third floor, or basement?” he asked slyly.

“Second floor,” she said, hoping the basement would be an adequate finale. “Let’s work our way up and then leave the best for last.”

She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised that the house had a third floor, but there was something strange about the layout of the place that made it appear even bigger than it already was. Three floors seemed a little extravagant to her. Even so, she was intrigued enough by the idea of yet more unexplored space to readily follow Toby up the Persian-carpeted staircase to the second floor.

It was even stranger than she’d imagined; though the first floor had been composed of ridiculously large, spacious rooms—all tall and open—the second floor was cramped and scattered, like a failed attempt at a maze.

“Jeez, who designed this, M. C. Escher?” Toby snorted as they traversed the creaking staircases

“Either him or Sarah W,” Ebony added, thinking of the Winchester Mystery House she’d begged to see when she was little. She now wondered if they’d find a staircase leading to nowhere, or a doorway into a brick wall. The second floor was dusted in cobwebs and soot like the first, decked out with wooden floors and paneling and all kinds of eccentric adornments. Ebony touched a piece of spider-webbed stained glass, half expecting it to shatter under her fingertips.

Ebony slipped from the hallway into a bedroom that had a door leading out the other side into a second hallway, disconnected from the first. She spotted a pair of double doors that she pulled open dramatically to find an empty main room with cherry wood closets covering two sides of the walls, like paneling. Curious, Ebony walked over, her block heels making an ominous clump, clump, clump across the floor. She gripped a tiny knob, shaped like an old key, and went to turn it, only to find the cupboard somehow locked.

A wave of disappointment came over her, but she heard Toby call her name distantly and found herself hurrying from the room to rejoin him, not bothering to close the doors behind her.

It was disturbingly silent on the second floor compared to the muffled music and voices they’d heard while exploring the first, and Ebony found herself anxious to rejoin Toby. She didn’t scare easily, but wandering through the darkness alone was beginning to give her a not-so-nice feeling. Eventually, she found her partner in crime, leaning out over some sort of balcony to peer down at the high-ceilinged living room where they’d left their party-mates.

“Ebony,” Toby repeated, his face strangely ashen.

“What?” she said brightly, sure he was about to pull some prank on her. But all Toby did was solemnly point down at the still-lit living room.

Cautiously, Ebony leaned over the railing and jolted back in surprise. Some part of her realized that something wasn’t quite right even before she looked, but it was the visual that made her fully understand.

She couldn’t hear any music, and she couldn’t hear talking. Because while she and Toby been off exploring, everyone else had vanished.

 

 

Two: Ultimate Hide and Seek

 

EBONY STARED OVER the railing for a long time: that was where Saffron had been sitting on the coffee table. Those were the cups a group of the guys had been setting up for beer pong. There was where she’d last seen Ivory, chatting to a pair of twins. At least, Ebony thought they were twins, from the back.

She stared for a long time, hoping the longer she looked the more likely the scene was to change. She finally straightened and turned to Toby. “…What?” That was all she could manage.

Toby shook his head, just as confused as she.

“Where did they go?” she demanded, even though a more reasonable side of her reminded her that it was impossible for Toby to answer that, either.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, the muscles in his throat working.

“…Okay, when I said I wanted something strange and exciting to happen, I was not talking about this,” Ebony clarified, swallowing.

“Shoulda knocked on wood,” Toby said, but it was an automatic response. Something he had to say, because he wasn’t sure what else to do.

They were gabbing uselessly, following an unwritten script, because at least if they kept saying these meaningless things, it gave their brains time to adjust to the impossibility of it all.

They stood there for a few moments, doing nothing more than staring down at the first floor until lightning flashed to light up both their faces, with a rumble of thunder behind it. Ebony forced herself to turn to Toby and think reasonably.

“It’s unlikely Ivory and Saffron spread the word about us liking scary stuff, and everyone decided to prank us, right?”

“I think it’s more likely some local punks found out we were renting this place and are scaring the hell out of all of us,” Toby replied. “We need to get our phones. If worst comes to worst, I’m callin’ the cops.”

His words made Ebony flinch a little. “Well…It’s not…It’s not that serious—” she started.

“Eb, we did drive through the same city, right?” Toby challenged her. “If a bored group of dudes on a Friday night knew a bunch of preppy college kids rented out ‘Maestro’s Cabin’, anything could happen. I’m not taking chances; we need our phones.”

“…That sort of stuff doesn’t happen anymore,” Ebony said quietly, but Toby sounded serious enough to scare her.

She followed him back the way they’d come, irrationally hoping to see a familiar face around each corner. Toby was retracing their steps, looking for the staircase back down, but the more they walked, the more Ebony felt like they were stepping into unexplored territory.

“Does the house seem…bigger to you?” she whispered as they stood in the doorway of a room she didn’t think she’d seen before.

Toby didn’t reply, but she could tell that he was just as confused as she was. They kept moving forward, and with every step Ebony was surer that there was something supernatural afoot. It was a stupid sort of feeling; she knew that stuff only happened in movies, but it was the only explanation her mind seemed willing to accept. They must have wandered for another half-hour, each moment feeling eerier than the last, as rain continued to pound above them.

When Toby moved past her to try another room, she tugged on his shirtsleeve to stop him.

“We didn’t come this way before,” she insisted. “I know we didn’t!”

He shushed her even though she’d only raised her voice a decibel since last time she’d spoken. Ebony was about to protest again when Toby gave a sudden “aha!” and walked through the door. Terrified of being left on her own, Ebony followed. They’d never seen this room before. But on the other end was a familiar door. It had a little carving on the knob, and Ebony remembered opening the door herself the last time around.

“…But we didn’t come this way before,” she insisted, incredibly confused.

“Never mind, it’s easy to get turned around in here,” Toby said, as if now that they’d found this door, it proved that they’d just been silly, thinking the house had grown and the rooms were mixed up.

Ebony reached for the handle and was surprised to feel her hand slip off when she tried to pull it. Eyes widening, she tried again, only to find that it wasn’t her lack of grip that foiled her; the door had been somehow locked, apparently from the outside.

“It’s stuck,” she said, turning to Toby.

“Here, let me,” he said with a sigh, handing her his keychain.

Ebony huffed irritably, some of her spunk returning now that their biggest problem was a sticky doorknob. “It’s not going to work—” she started, and then stopped when the door opened smoothly for Toby. When they peered through the doorway, they found the double doors that Ebony remembered seeing on the second floor.

Shocked, Toby closed the door, and then opened it back up again—this time to reveal the music room.

“What the hell?” he said, not bothering to whisper this time. “It’s like the house is moving.”

Ebony didn’t want to believe it, but she couldn’t deny what was right in front of her.

“Let’s try the windows,” she said, turning from the door as if that would somehow make it go away. “It’s not that high—we can climb down and come back in through the front…”

Toby still seemed enamored by the different rooms the door showed each time he opened it. He probably could have played with that door for the rest of the night, so Ebony closed it herself and stalked to the nearest window. She bent to pick up a dusty side table, planning to bang it against the windowpanes, only to find it bolted to the floor.

“Well, so much for that,” she muttered. She wasn’t about to try and punch through the glass; the way this night had been going so far, she’d probably cut up her hand, only to find a dusty attic waiting on the other side. “What now? We’re never going to get to the phones at this rate.”

“More importantly, we’re never getting out of here,” Toby said, and his tone concerned her. “I mean, ‘Bony, look at this. We’re both seeing this, right?”

He opened and closed the door a few more times and they watched it flash them a different room each time. Ebony nodded numbly.  

“We’re both seeing it.”

Ebony found herself fiddling with her turtle necklace, twirling the charm around and around until she snapped its little metal loop. She stared at it, lying in her hand. Things felt so different, now, compared to when she’d put it on not but two or three hours ago.

There was a slight creaking of the floorboards and Ebony and Toby whirled in tandem, his keychain light bobbing about to illuminate whatever was sneaking up behind them. But instead of the bloodthirsty monsters or serial killers Ebony had counted on, they were met instead by a very petite, shadowy figure.

“E-E-Ebony? Is that…you?” came Saffron’s shaky voice. She sounded like she was about to cry. 

“Saffy?...Oh, good,” Toby said, as if this solved everything. He took a step towards her. “Mind telling us what the hell—”

“Stay away!” she screeched, and that stopped him in his tracks. “Say something that proves it’s you!” she insisted.

Ebony gave Toby a look.

“What?”

“Say something that proves you’re really Toby and Ebony!”

“Uh…You like dark chocolate better than milk chocolate and think movie franchises with more than three installments aren’t worth anyone’s time,” Ebony said.

“You’re a biochem major, I’m math, Ivory was politics, and ‘Bony’s still gotta declare,” Toby added. “…You want a golden retriever puppy.”

Saffron had stopped listening at that point. She was taking deep, shuddering breaths, and simply walked forward and threw her arms around Ebony. Unsure of what to do, Ebony looked to Toby, and awkwardly patted their freaked out friend on the shoulder.

“Jeez, Saffy, what happened?” Toby asked. “…Cuz I swear to God, if a buncha bored city kids did this…if they think—”

“They’re not kids!” Saffron was practically shrieking. “They’re not kids!!”

“…You mean a bunch of grown men—?”

“I mean they’re not people!” Saffron screamed, and then broke down into tears. Toby and Ebony stared at her. “Th-They’re not people, but they look like people. Th-they got everyone a-and they touched Bobby and his s-s-skin bubbled and came off his arm!”

“Where is everyone?” Ebony asked, trying to un-wrap Saffron’s arms from around her. “Saffy? Where’s Ivory?”

“Gone,” Saffron managed to get out. Her words were all tear-choked and mumbling. “She’s gone. They got her. They got everyone!”

“Hey, calm down, Saffy,” Toby insisted, trying to help. “Who’s ‘they’? What are ‘they’? You’re, uh…You’re not making any sense, here.”

“It looked like Elle, but it’s not Elle. She was one of them and she…” Saffron shuddered. “It’s like that movie you and Eb watched. The old one! Where they take over people!”

“Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” Ebony guessed.

“Yes! That! Except…Except they’re worse!”

Ebony had finally managed to get Saffron to let go of her, and looked over at Toby. Either Saffron had her drink spiked, and everyone else was in on an elaborate ruse, or there was something more sinister at play.

“All right, to hell with the phones. We’re just finding a door and gettin’ out of this place,” Toby decided.

“But, Ivory!” Ebony blurted out. There was no way she was leaving her sister. She couldn’t. Ivory had looked after her since forever. If those monsters had her sister, Ebony knew she had to save her.

Toby wasn’t listening.

“We’ll get out,” he insisted. “We’ll go to the police. We’ll tell them what happened. They’ll come and fix everything and…and it’ll all be fine. Yeah. It’ll be fine,” he said again, reassuring himself more than the girls.

“What about the doors?” Ebony pointed out. If that one door showed a different room every time, it was a safe bet most of the other doors would do the same. Even if they did find the front of the house, opening the front door might just lead them into the basement, and they’d have to start all over again.

“Eventually, one has to lead us outside, right? So if we—”

“Oh, look! All our little chicks in one place!” interrupted a teasing female voice. “Aw…aren’t they cute? Look at how scared they are!”

They all looked back the way Saffron came to find a newcomer standing there, her hands on her hips. She wasn’t very big, but for some reason, the tone of her voice made her a hundred times more intimidating.

It was Elle, but it wasn’t. Her voice was completely different. “I’ll leave them to you, Mr. Pointe. I gotta find the Skinless!” Elle went on, still in that sickly sweet sing-song. “They’re prepping her skin for me!” she added, clapping her hands in joy. “And we can’t have her running around, causing trouble…”

But Ebony wasn’t listening to “Elle” anymore. Her mention of “Mr. Pointe” seemed to suggest there was someone else here. And since there was no one standing alongside Elle, and no one to the left or right, that meant…

Ebony turned back with a gasp to find a large, terrifying figure in the doorway Toby had meant to take them through. He wore a suit and carried a gun in a gloved hand, while the other hand was bare. His silver pocket watch swung slightly in a hypnotizing way, and for a second, Ebony couldn’t move. That moment felt like an eternity, but couldn’t have lasted that long, because suddenly everyone was moving, and she’d somehow managed to evade one of those gigantic hands.

“Eb!” she heard Saffron scream, and realized that her friends had jumped in the opposite direction.

Ebony made a hasty decision. “Go! Get out! I’ll find you later—just run!”

All she could do was hope they’d listen, because all she could do was twist around and run. There were doors on every side of this room, and she sprinted to the only one available to her, throwing it open and slamming it closed behind her. She hoped that the house swapped rooms for these monsters, too, because that at least meant that she’d have an advantage so long as she closed every door behind her. From the sounds of things, it seemed Mr. Pointe was coming after her. Either that, or there were more of these things here than she thought.

Well, maybe not “things”. Saffy had said they were monsters, but Saffy was scared out of her mind. While the house itself seemed to support this as a work of the supernatural, Ebony didn’t want to assume anything until she saw the proof.

After a while, her heart and legs grew tired, and she turned to walk backward, swapping from looking behind her to in front of her every few seconds to see if she was being followed. She almost hoped Pointe was after her. It would at least mean Toby and Saffron were safer…She thought she’d heard a scream while she was running, but maybe it was her imagination. It had sounded like Saffy, but…

She pushed the thought out of her head.

Ebony experienced a brief moment of relief when she saw a pair of double doors and opened them to that large room with cabinet-covered walls. She wanted to curl up in a corner, rest her legs, and cry, but that wouldn’t do anyone any good. So instead, she forced herself to close the doors again and reopen them several times, just to check. But no: each time, she saw the cabinets.

Okay, so it looked like those double doors would always lead into this room. That was progress. That made this room home base. She’d venture out just a little bit at a time, looking for a way out, and then she’d return. She had to do everything she could to make sure the house didn’t switch itself up again. This way, she hoped, she’d be able to find the way out and send a SWAT team back for everyone else. Local police weren’t going to cut it now, she didn’t think.

Ebony didn’t curl up in a corner and cry, but she did  give herself a moment to catch her breath and gather her wits. If these monsters could get into the house, that meant there had to be a way out. No matter how ridiculous it seemed, the only explanation left was that she was facing something supernatural, and if that was truly the case, she wouldn’t be able to use any sort of algorithm to map the house’s movements. Nor did she think she’d be able to do it without a computer and a lot of time on her hands.

Having someone smarter than her around would help, too…

But, no! She had to stay positive. Maybe she wasn’t the smartest, or the best equipped, but her sister needed her. Maybe Toby and Saffron needed her, too. She’d have to do whatever she could, for their sakes…

It was about that time, when she’d convinced herself that she could be the hero of the story, so to speak, that a knock startled her into squeaking and jumping into the center of the room. Because the knock, as best as Ebony could figure, had come from inside the cabinets.

Breathing hard, she stared at the cabinets. What if it was one of those things that Saffy had described? The things that looked like people, but weren’t? Like whatever Elle was, now?

Another knock. For some reason, it sounded desperate. Or irritated, maybe.

Ebony had to make a decision. Last time she’d tried to open the cabinets, nothing had happened. But if this house was a trap set by the monsters, surely said monsters wouldn’t need her to open a cabinet so that they could come after her. This wasn’t Ghost in the Graveyard, with a designated safety zone, for the love of God.

Before she could overthink it, Ebony stepped forward and yanked on the cabinet door so hard that she almost fell backwards.

What came out was not at all what she’d expected. He was human, as far as she could tell, and he climbed out of the cabinet as if it was bigger on his side.

“Finally,” he muttered. “I was beginning to think they’d gotten you.”

The cabinet-man was perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties. He was copper skinned, with close-cropped hair and a tiny tattoo of a tastefully done Chinese dragon curled around his right hand and wrist. At perhaps six foot two, he was rather tall, and certainly fit. If asked, he would probably consider himself in his prime.        

He was not what Ebony had expected at all.

Given her experience with both horror movies and the past half-hour of hell, it would have made far more sense for this man to be one of the monsters after her skin. Not a confident, good-looking, snarky human being.

“Uh, hi,” she finally spluttered. “Are you here to kill me or help me? Cuz it’s sort of been a really long night so far, and I’m hoping it’s the second one.”

The newcomer had been scanning the room warily, ignoring her presence up until this point. “Are you human?” he asked, scrutinizing her.

Ebony spluttered. “What kind of a question is that? What else would I be?”

“…Well that answers that,” he said, rolling his eyes and re-checking the perimeter of the room. “Are there any more of you wandering around?”

“Um…I don’t know. My sister, maybe,” Ebony said hopefully. “…Who are you?” she added, stumbling along after him. She saw he had a gun with him, and though she wasn’t sure if it was real, she’d feel safer if she was close to it.

“Just call me your knight in shining armor,” he replied dryly, obviously not familiar with the usual connotations of that saying. “Follow me,” he said, already moving towards the door. Ebony hastened to catch him as he pressed his ear to the wood. She wondered if that actually helped, or if it was simply something one did to look more confident about their actions.

“We’re going to find this sister of yours, and then we’re going to get the hell out of here before Maestro’s goons show up,” he said. Ebony was still looking at his gun, wondering why it looked so strange to her. It wasn’t any old normal hand-held, that was for sure. Now that he’d drawn it, she wondered if it had some sort of extra kick behind it. Like a special modification.

“Hey,” the man snapped, startling her. “I said, ‘you got it’?”

Ebony nodded. “…What’s a Maestro? In this context, I mean?” she wondered, and he cursed under his breath.

“Why is it I always get the Naïve ones?” she thought she heard him mutter.

A second later, he’d flung the door open and was walking down the hallway without answering her question.

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