by CeeCee James
“Okay. Sure. That does sound kind of interesting.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Kind of?”
“Well, I’ll admit, I’m not much of a game person. And, I’m half-afraid I’d be locked in there for good.” She shot him a worried look. “They do let you out eventually, right?”
“No, they keep you locked in there and let the bodies pile up.” He laughed. “Of course they let you out. I think they give you an hour to solve the riddles and clues.”
“I knew that. The thought of being locked up just causes an irrational fear, I guess.”
“Yeah, that’s the point. To get past the fear and win the game. No one wants to be rescued.”
“When is it going to be ready?”
Loud clumping came down the stairs. “Let’s ask the man of the hour himself,” Dave answered.
A young man with red hair hanging in his face tromped down the stairs. He wore a carpenter’s belt around his baggy jeans, and the handle of the hammer banged against his leg with every step.
“Hey, Dave!” he called, brushing the hair out of his eyes. “How’s it going?”
“Jake! I was just going to ask you the same thing. How are things up there?”
“Oh, it’s going good. We should be ready for the tour tomorrow.” He scratched his nose, bringing Elise’s attention to his many freckles.
“This is Elise. She’s going to be our new shopkeeper.”
Jake looked at his hand first then brushed it off on the back of his pants. He thrust it out to Elise. “Hi, there. I’m Jake. Nice to meet you.”
Elise noticed his arm was heavily covered with freckles as well. “It’s nice to meet you,” she responded, shaking his hand. “Escape from the Rabbit hole, huh?” she flicked her gaze toward the second story.
“Out of the rabbit hole, and yeah. It’s pretty cool. You’ll have to come see it sometime.”
“I’d love too. I guess I’m accompanying Dave.”
“Oh, cool.” The young man nodded. “Well, I’m just off to pick up a few more things. Wires, lightbulbs. The hardware manager knows me by name,” he joked. “I’ll catch you guys later.”
They waved as he headed out the door.
“He and his partner are both pretty nice guys. I think this is going to work out really well. Hopefully, their customers will want to hang out here for a bit, waiting for their turn to go through the room.” He glanced at her. “I’ll take all the business I can get, now that ebooks have eaten into my trade.”
Elise nodded. “Maybe you could have a section by the stairs that just focuses on mysteries. Or games? Maybe comic books?” she threw out, trying to hit all the markets.
He tapped his chin with his index finger. “I like the way you think. I knew there was a reason why I hired you.”
Chapter 3
It was the start of her second week there—each day easier than the last as she learned her way around the coffee shop and bookstore—that Elise opened the bookstore to see three men talking at the bottom of the stairs. Dave she recognized, but the other two were new to her.
“Hey, hey! There she is!” Dave gave his characteristic big grin. His arm reached around her, eventually coming to rest on her upper back. “Elise, this is Thomas, the other side of the brain-trust of the Escape room.” A young man with sandy-blond hair stuck out his hand. Elise shook it quickly.
“And this is Harry,” Dave continued.
“He’s the brawn to our brains,” Thomas volunteered.
“Oh, really?” Elise said, her hand outstretched. Harry was tall, much taller than the rest of them, bald, and about her age. Still, he was in excellent shape, and his muscles flexed under his shirt as he took her hand. Elise felt like a little girl as she looked up. “The brawn, huh? It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too.” His eyes were the color of hot chocolate and his voice deep and low. Releasing her hand, he gave her a warm smile, showing two dimples. “I’m the head contractor of this shin-dig.” He glanced up the stairs. “Been one of the most interesting projects I’ve ever done, to say the least.”
“I can only imagine how fun it was, making traps to escape from and expecting customers to pay to be the mice. And all of it in honor of the store’s Alice in Wonderland book.” She smiled at him again before her gaze flicked over to her boss. “I guess we’re getting a tour today, huh Dave?”
“Are you guys sure this time? Because you’ve told me ‘tomorrow’ about five times already.” he answered, looking at Thomas and Jake. “Am I right, boys?”
“Quit giving us a hard time and let’s go put those reasoning skills to the test.” Thomas grinned cheekily.
Elise arched an eyebrow at Thomas confidently, even though her insides quaked at the thought of being locked in a room. No windows. No way out.
Harry gave her the thumbs up. “Don’t let me down, now.”
She nodded with stoicism, even as her ankles felt weak as she climbed the stairs. People do this for fun. It’s a challenge. Taking a shaky grab, she grabbed the door jam. I can do this. “All right, let’s go.” The words fell from her mouth with zero enthusiasm.
“Hey. You going to be okay going in there?” Thomas’s eyebrows rose in concern at her expression. “Don’t break anything. Don’t take anything off the walls. The things needing to be unlocked or solved aren’t going to require anything over your head to be taken down. Or ripped off the wall.” He eyed her again as she gave him a thumbs up. Nodding, he continued. “You’ve got sixty minutes.” He glanced at his watch. “Starting now.”
Thomas opened the door and ushered them in. As the door was closing, he yelled, “And be careful of the—”
The door clicked shut.
“Be careful?” Elise’s stomach rolled with nausea. Not the words she wanted to hear in a near-pitch black room. She looked at Dave. Things were easy between them, but she usually worked at the store alone. It was a bit odd to be locked in a room with him.
Dave mumbled. “He probably just said that to make us more tense. Okay. Let’s go.”
It took a moment for Elise’s eyes to adjust to the room and absorb the surroundings. Neon-colored lights made the psychedelic swirls of color in the darkness. There were mini-stations along the wall. Pipes and drawers and a book on a table and a peg board. A life-size illustrated Grandfather clock, crazy eyes, and dancing mushrooms competed for the visual palette along with strings of wires, blinking lights, and rows of boxes.
Sweat accumulated at the base of Elise’s neck. She lifted up her hair. “What do we do now?”
“Well, now we look for the question.”
“Question?”
“Yeah, to show us which puzzle to solve first.”
They wandered around the room studying the panels on the wall. Elise noticed the floor where a yellow painted arrow pointed to a massive spinning circle—like a roulette wheel—hanging from the wall.
“Clue number one,” she said.
The wheel hung under a clear pipe, obviously waiting for something to fall from the pipe to make the wheel spin. All around it was painted glowing eyes that stared at them. Elise’s gaze followed the pipe as it traveled away from the wheel. Fake vines draped from the wall and partially covered it, but she could see where the pipe curved around onto the corner and ended above a large chest.
Dave noticed it at the same time she did. The glanced at each other and both walked over.
“What do you think of this?” he asked. He fiddled with the chest, trying to open it. It remained locked.
She felt herself loosening up. I can totally do this. The challenge of the games suddenly seemed fun.
The top of the chest held a book—the encyclopedia of all things about Alice in Wonderland—and the wall above it had a peg board. Colored pegs could be used to connect a string from one picture to another. After a few moments, they concluded that the pegs coordinated with answers in the book. Quickly, they looked up the answers and placed the pegs in their correct spots on the board.
When the last peg was placed, a small door popped open on the front of the chest. They grinned at each other.
It revealed a key. A key to what? Eventually, the trail took them over to another game where they had to guess the different color combination to imitate the swirls of smoke coming off a painted hookah pipe. The answer to that revealed a locked box. They opened it with their key and discovered a ladle. After finishing another puzzle, they found a vase with a ping-pong ball at the bottom.
Still another game led them to a source of water. The ladle finally made sense as it came into use transporting the water to fill the vase until the ping pong ball floated to the surface and they were able to grab it.
Finally, they took the ball to the clear pipe. Elise held the ball to the end and the pipe sucked it up, much like the machine at the bank drive-through.
They followed the ball as it traveled around the room in its pipe until it was finally spit out onto the wheel.
The wheel clicked as it spun. When it stopped the ball fell into a numbered slot. A small drawer popped open on the table underneath.
Elise and Dave leaned over curiously. Inside the drawer sat a plate with two pink-frosted cookies on it.
The note next to it said- Take a bite and go small.
Elise eyed the cookies on the plate. “Um. No.” She crossed her arms with a decided frown.
“What? It’s no big deal. We have to figure this out.” Dave turned the plate with his finger.
“You go for it. I’m not eating any of this. Hello, A.” She lifted a finger to number her points, “We don’t know who touched that or where they came from.”
“Maybe out of a cookie package?”
“They look homemade.” She glanced at them again. “Who knows what they’re made with.”
“It’s the adventure,” Dave said, picking up the cookie.
Elise read the sign again. “Wait a second. Something’s wrong here. In Alice in Wonderland, doesn’t the drink make her shrink, and the food make her grow? This is the opposite.” She shook her head. “We have to be missing a clue.”
“So, you don’t think we should eat it?” Dave’s eyebrows rumpled.
“Eat it if you want, but that’s not the game. It’s just the clue.” She examined the wheel, searching for something.
“What are you looking for?”
“Opposites. Strong opposites,” Elise muttered. Short, tall, big, small.
The painted grandfather clock on the wall was the tallest thing in the room. She walked over and studied it again.
Something behind the wheel began a series of long beeps. The beeps grew louder and closer together. Elise felt her pulse ramp up along with it.
Next to her, Dave’s movements became more erratic as the noise affected him too.
“What about this?” he asked, pointing to the clock’s face.
The numbers were mixed-up. Instead of a twelve being at the top, it was a six. She stared at the clock then dropped to a knee.
The pendulum was a circle box with a real punch-code lock. Words painted around it said, “The chime at the top and Under the bottom.”
Top of the hour is six. She punched in the number. It turned green, leaving the other two spaces blank.
She read the code again. Under the bottom. Whirling, she raced to the plate of cookies and picked it up. Nothing. She flipped the plate over. Relief flooded through her at the sight of number—93.
Back at the lock, she typed in 39. All three lights turned green and a click was heard. The painted edge of the clock cracked, revealing a door.
“How did you know to flip the numbers around?” Dave said, sounding impressed.
“The clue said, eat it to go small, so I did the smaller number first.” She pushed the panel in the clock to open it wider.
“Very interesting. You should be a detective.”
“I like working in a bookstore. It’s safer.” She smiled. Her grin fell off as flashing lights from the other side of the panel shown through into their room. A groan came out of her. “There’s another room?”
He shrugged sheepishly and tugged on his beard. “Yeah. I guess so.”
Oh, my word. Elise squeezed her forehead as the first throb of a headache made its warning. “It’s taken us forty minutes to get out of the first room. How many rooms are there?”
Dave shook his head. “I’ve got no idea, but we better get a move on and find out.”
Elise wasted no time in the next room. Ignoring the sirens, the flashing lights and the bizarre colors, she studied the walls. The door has to be around here somewhere.
There was the obvious door, but once she tried the handle, she found it was locked.
Another part of the wall was covered with a blanket. While Dave fiddled with a maze of matching up color slides, she walked over to the blanket and flipped it up.
Just a plain piece of wood paneling. She pushed on the paneling and smiled at its springiness. Something was behind it. “Dave! Over here!”
He joined her in helping her pry the board off the wall. A door was revealed behind it.
“We did it!” she said, giving Dave a hug. She reached for the knob and squealed with excitement as it turned in her hand. The two of them hurried through the doorway and onto a set of stairs.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” a male voice yelled. “What the heck did you do?” An incredulous Thomas stared at her from around the corner. “Did you break our room?”
“What do you mean? We won!”
The young man shook his head, eyes wide. “Nope. You were supposed to find that doorway there,” he pointed to where Jake stood with a matching look of surprise on his freckled face. “What did you do?”
“I just pushed on the paneling,” Elise demonstrated, “And it popped off.”
Dave grinned at her. “Boys, I think she’s the winner, no matter what you say.”
“Well, crap,” Thomas sighed. He ran his hands along the open doorway. “Jake, we’ve got to cover this somehow. And not with a blanket.” He shot his friend a scowl. “I should have known that would have never worked.”
“I told her not to take anything off the wall.”
Elise wrinkled her nose. “Shoot. Everything was popping open. I forgot. I’m sorry.”
“No worries. That’s what this run through is for,” Thomas turned to Jake. “Now, what are we going to do to cover this?
“A painting,” his partner suggested. “We’ll get one of a giant rabbit or a tea set or something. Relax. It’ll be okay.”
“Anyway, you were supposed to pull a square puzzle piece out of here,” Thomas pointed to a box, “Which fits into there,” he jabbed his thumb in the direction of a flashing machine. “Which opened up a box for the key to the doorway over there, leading back down the front stairs.”
Elise blinked hard. “I knew that.”
Dave laughed. “I thought it was incredible. Great job, guys. I really loved it.” He turned to Elise. “Ready to get out of here?”
Elise felt terrible. “Yeah. I really am sorry guys.”
The two young men had already turned their attention to fixing their escape room. “No worries. And you did win!”
“Do I get a prize?”
“Yeah!” Thomas yelled. “A cookie.”
Dave led the way down the stairs. He opened the door and they both re-entered the bookstore. Elise smiled and took a deep breath at the beautiful sight of the bright rectangles of sunshine on the floor. She looked back at Dave. “Never again,” she vowed.
On the way home that night, Elise had to stop at the store to pick up a few groceries. Oddly, she was buying ramen noodles once more even though she’d sworn she’d never eat them again. Lucy loved them.
Lucy was the homeless teenager she’d invited to stay with her a few months ago. So far, things had been going pretty smoothly. The girl was easy to please—as the noodles seemed to attest to—and back in school. Things with Brad, Elise’s boyfriend, were going great. He was still an officer with the Angel L
ake police department and was up for a promotion soon. Life was finally going in the direction she’d always dreamed about.
When she got back out to her car with her groceries, she was annoyed to notice a flyer under her windshield wiper. She hated it when people did that. She popped the hatch on her Pinto and unloaded the few bags from the cart. After returning the cart to the stall, she ripped the paper out.
Her irritation faded and her blood ran cold as she stared at the flyer.
It was a picture of her from the shoulders up.
She remembered when it had happened—just yesterday. She’d been frustrated to discover her towel had not been hanging at its customary place on the rack. Somehow she’d overlooked it was missing when she climbed into the shower and had been forced to run naked and wet through her bedroom to grab her bathrobe.
Who was watching her? She turned it over to read crude printing. “My shy girl…you wouldn’t want the rest of this picture plastered all over town. Be prepared to pay the price.”
Chapter 4
Elise sighed as she tried to reread the same page in her mystery as she sat at the bookshop for her shift the next day. It was her third time attempting to get through it. Dave had her running the store alone now, but right now being alone was the last thing she wanted. All she could think about was the picture from last night.
She’d shown it to Brad when she’d got home. He’d been understandably incensed, swearing to her, “Baby, I’m going to find that guy.” With him being a cop, she had no doubt that he would. He’d taken the picture, clenched in a trembling fist, and walked around the house to find the direction that it had been taken from.
It turned out that there was just enough of a crack between her curtains on her bedroom window to allow a glimpse into her bathroom. She’d promptly covered the window with a blanket that night and planned to purchased blinds on her way home tonight.
The bell jingled above the store’s door, the sound barely entering Elise’s consciousness as she turned the page in her book.