Thanks for being patient. I would like to give a shout out (if I haven't already) to Extreme Light 9, who gave me the idea to make this story and is helping me make it. Thanks a lot, buddy. Check out his work when you can, dear readers, that would be appreciated.
Last time, on Trapped in the Closet
Now that everybody had their sources of light, the team illuminated the area around them and discovered that the walls were rock-like in appearance, and in the ground near the red stains were skeletons laying around, some with weapons sticking out of their bodies. There were also yellow arrows painted on the walls, each one pointing at a specific direction.
Coincidentally, they pointed at the only direction the team could go to: forward.
"Either Stan misunderstood this place for a closet, or the Mystery Shack holds more secrets than I thought." remarked Dipper. "Well, can't go anywhere but deeper inside. Let's go."
The rest nodded in agreement and followed Dipper to the arrow's direction, leaving just as lighting was heard coming from outside, and a malicious laughter was heard as the arrows changed to...bloodied eyes.
(Deeper inside the "closet")
Dipper lead the way through the cave-like closet using his flashlight, with the rest tightly holding their light sources: Mabel's glow stick, Wendy's cell phone...and Soos's underwear.
"Okay, everybody, watch where you're going." instructed Dipper. "If what I researched is correct, and I can't say for sure since I got it from the internet, places like this always have some kind of hidden trap for whoever is stupid enough to investigate. If we want to get out of here as fast as we can, we must make sure we don't activate any trap."
"Understood!"
Mabel held her glow stick higher and she then looked down to see her feet as she continued to walk. The rest continued to walk like normal while they checked the "closet", at least in Soos and Wendy's case.
The duo found many disturbing things once they lit up specific places. Soos managed to find the suit of a former worker, with a few blood stains around the pants, and nearby it there was a skeletal head with the mouth wide open. A few bugs crawl out of the skulls and form the sentence "YOU ARE NEXT" before they hiss at him. Soos got the message and left them alone.
Wendy, who was checking her phone's battery as she lit up, used it to light up a normal wall, only this one had some blood in it. She failed to spot anything important, and when a hand formed in the wall and seemingly reached for the teenager, she was too focused on her phone's battery to notice and she swiftly turned around just as the hand tried to grab her.
However, the teen girl soon turned back to the hand and this time she saw it. She gasped in shock but didn't lose her cool that much, and she took a few steps backwards before another arm formed near the other arm, only much longer and with the fingers stripped to the bone. The two arms turned to each other and waved their hands, snatching away the girl's phone shortly afterwards.
Another hand formed when Wendy was going to run, holding the girl back as the arm and longer arm wrote something. Once they finished, the arm holding Wendy back returned to the wall and the teenager jumped, taking her phone from the arms. The arms returned to the wall as Wendy read the message: "PEOPLE DIE ALL THE TIME, WHEN AND WHERE IS THE QUESTION. WILL YOU DIE HERE, AND SOON?"
"Okay, this place is starting to creep me out." said Wendy as she reunited with the team.
The team continued to follow Dipper until they arrived at a round room, where there was only one way to go. The rest of the room looked like it had been splattered with a red liquid, one different from the blood from before.
"Fine, usually whenever a group of friends inside a strange and creepy place decide to separate for an investigation or whatever, bad things happen." said Dipper. "However, we have no other options. Mabel, you go deeper while the rest of us investigate."
Mabel nodded and continued to walk while the rest checked the room. The girl didn't find anything that she hadn't seen before: rock-like walls, blood on the grounds and skeletons. However, she did manage to find something new.
"Hey, are those drawings?"
Just not something she would've liked to see.
The first image slightly shocked the girl: her friends fighting and greatly hurting each other, to the point that there was some blood on the ground. The next one greatly disturbed her: her pet pig, Waddles, had been cooked alive and served near a withered Mabel, who was being forced to eat it.
However, what came next caused Mabel to lose her lunch...and her breakfast: what she saw was a huge picture of Dipper freezing to death and being turned into a wood before being burned, Soos with a hundred eyes watching him and a gigantic one growing near him as he withered and Wendy having had her organs completely removed, leaving her a hollow corpse laying on the wall.
"I really hope I never meet whoever made these drawings." said Mabel.
Not wanting to take any other chances, Mabel ignored any drawings that she discovered and continued to walk until she saw something that gave the girl some hope: a torch in one of the walls. That was lit. And whose flame had a purple color.
"Guys, I found something!" shouted Mabel with joy.
Having heard that, the team quickly stopped what they were doing and went running towards Mabel.
"Really?" asked Soos.
"What did you find?" asked Wendy.
"Someone's former sexual orientation?" questioned Dipper with a raised eyebrow.
Mabel stood there silently after hearing her brother's suggestion. She shook off the confusion just as the trio arrived.
"Even if I had found such thing, I have no reason to tell you." replied Mabel, who then pointed at the torch as she spoke. "And besides, that is not the important thing I found. What I found was this torch in one of the walls."
"One which is suspiciously lit, and purple, if I may point out." uttered Dipper with a suspicious tone.
"Yeah, don't you find it weird that there's a torch with that color in one of the walls?" added Wendy. "I mean, it can't be a simple coincidence."
"Guys, I know that grabbing something conveniently placed could be a bad idea, I'm pretty sure that's something Dipper said earlier." said Mabel. "But let's try to have a positive look and hope for the best, okay?"
Having said that, the trio exchanged worried looks before Mabel reached for the torch. However, just as she touched it, she glanced at the trio to see they were gesturing her to not grab it. Seeing that, the girl sighed and turned to the team.
"Okay guys, think it like this: so it might be a trap, but it might not be a trap either, it could go either way! The only way we can find out is if I grab it and take it. If it's not a trap, then we're going to be fine!"
"And if it is a trap, something bad will happen to us!" retorted Dipper.
Mabel was quiet for a moment, and then grabbed the torch in the next moment. Everybody waited for a second in expectation...and nothing happened.
"See? Nothing to worry-" and then Mabel raised the torch, with the flame somehow revealing some gibberish writen on the walls. "-About?"
Everybody looked up and saw that the flames revealed various writings, most being complete gibberish, repetitive, or some gibberish that repeated itself ad infinitum. The team quickly decided to keep going instead of reading that.
(Some minutes later)
Everybody looked exhausted from walking for an undetermined amount of time, and their sources of light-except the torch and glow stick-started to blink or otherwise show that their batteries were about to die. And then, when they sighed in frustration as they didn't seem to find another path, they eventually found...
"A dead-end." uttered a shocked Mabel.
"Awesome! Just what we needed! A dead-end! After walking for who knows how long, we have made some progress!" a frustrated Dipper cheered in a tone indistinguishable from joy. And then he spotted something on the wall, which was discovered thanks to the purple torch. "Wait, light up those words over there."
Mabel obeyed and moved closer to the dead-end, which revealed something writen on it. Seeing that, Mabel passed the torch to Dipper and she went to Wendy and Soos while Dipper checked the writing.
"What is it?" asked Wendy.
"It looks like an ancient writing from a cursed spirit that is haunting the closet we are in right now, spoken in a strange language that died centuries ago." Soos looked closely and then spotted a chicken among the writing. "It's either that or the menu of a defunct fast foot restaurant."
"I write this to give you a warning: the place you're currently trapped in is not normal, and it seems to want blood more than...it changes tones by the next paragraph." read Dipper.
And then the ground slightly shaked.
"Dudes, did you feel that too?" asked Soos, getting shrugs in response.
With the team waiting for a moment to see if the ground would shake again, Dipper continued to read once the ground remained motionless. "This is what will happen shortly after you finish reading this..."
Dipper paused with a horrified look once he read the rest of the sentence in his mind.
"What?" asked Mabel.
"I...I can't finish it." replied Dipper with evident fear.
Having heard her brother say that, Mabel gets a worried look and she wondered what to do. She turned to Soos and Wendy, but they shrugged in response to show they didn't knew what to do either. She thought about it for a moment and she eventually got an idea that gave her a brace-filled smile.
"I'll finish it for you then!" exclaimed Mabel, who grabbed the torch and walked towards the writing, though Dipper tried to stop her.
A short clash between the twins occurred and Mabel and Dipper eventually gave up, only for Mabel to go ahead and light up the writing so she could finish it. Dipper tried his hardest to stop his sister from seeing what he couldn't read, but it was too late.
"This is what will happen shortly after you finish reading this: the ground will shake violently, the walls will get bleeding faces and macabre visions of what you will face will appear before your eyes before you are taken to the next level. For I shall not stop your torment until I have squeezed every single drop of fear and blood out of your bodies?!"
Having realized what she had done, Mabel looked horrified for a moment before she giggled nervously and handed Dipper back the torch. Mabel noticed Soos, Wendy and Dipper's extremely worried expressions as she spoke.
"Can...can we act like I never said that?" inquired Mabel with a nervous laugh.
And then the ground started to shake. Violently.
"I think that's a no." responded Soos.
And then, the torch increased its flame up until it lit up all the walls. Heads of animals and known ones then formed on said walls, bleeding from all their orifices as they uttered some gibberish in a demonic voice. The shake intensified as the team suddenly turned around to see flashing phantoms of some of their friends-most of them mutilated in some way-before a crack appeared on the ground and it started to expand, though the team were too distracted by the phantoms to notice.
By the time the phantoms had disappeared, the heads turned into rocks and the torch's flame dissipated into nothing, the crack had eventually expanded up to the point where the ground broke, the team screaming as they fell.
(A long time later)
Mabel slowly recovered consciousness, though she kept her eyes closed for some reason, and once she moved a bit the room suddenly got light, something which bothered Mabel. The light she felt wasn't her glow stick, but a different kind of light.
"Dipper, turn off the lights, I don't want to go to school today." whined Mabel, who realized a moment later what she just said. "Wait, lights?!"
Mabel opened her eyes and, after grabbing her glow stick, she looked around to see many lamps and other light sources illuminating the room. It was also completely closed with no way to get out, but she didn't notice this.
She smiled with joy before she turned and spotted Wendy, who was snoring and laying around nearby. Mabel quickly went to Wendy and shaked her so she would wake up.
"Dad, stop shaking me, I don't want to go to school today." whined Wendy.
"Wendy! Wendy! Wake up! This room has lights!" exclaimed Mabel as she shaked the teenager. "We actually landed in a part of this closet that has light!"
Having heard what the girl said, Wendy opened her eyes, got up and then saw that what Mabel said was right. She sighed in relief as she removed the dust from her clothes and looked around with the happy Mabel. The room was lit by hundreds of lamps nearby, all of them hanging on the wall.
"Huh, would you look at that, there is a room in this stupid "closet" that has actual lights." Wendy heard a beep and turned to see her phone screen had a sad face and an empty battery bar, followed by the phone shutting off shortly afterwards. "And we found it just in time, my phone is dead."
Mabel's glow stick suddenly turned off after the comment and just as Wendy put her phone back on her pockets.
"And my glow stick no longer works either." said Mabel, who threw the glow stick away before she hugged Wendy in rejoice. "Now that we have lights, it will be far easier to find the exit! Right, Dipper?"
However, they didn't get any response. They then looked around and, much to their worry, they failed to find Soos or Dipper. Mabel was the only one actively panicking when she realized this, and she soon released the teenager and went to look for her brother.
"Dipper!" constantly called Mabel as she desperately looked everywhere for her brother. "Dipper, where are you?!"
Wendy chased the panicking girl and tackled her, grabbing the girl's sweater's neck before she spoke.
"Mabel, calm down!" told Wendy to the chocolate haired girl.
"Calm down?! I have been separated from my brother, who is pretty knowledgeable about this kind of situations, in the middle of a strange "closet" that seems to be haunted and alive, not to mention out for our blood if what the writing said is to be taken seriously, and you want me to calm down?!" snapped Mabel, who slapped Wendy shortly after she said that.
Grabbing her slapped cheek, Wendy frowned and immediately grabbed Mabel, pinning her down on the ground before she escaped. Wendy calmed down and gave Mabel a serious gaze as she spoke.
"Crying about it won't solve anything, Mabel!" chided the teenager to Mabel, continuing as she wiped off the tears on the girl's face. "What we need to do is find your brother and Soos. Then, we will all find an exit to this messed up place, and then we confront Mr. Pines about it, okay? I know that if we both work together, we will find them in no time. Do you understand, Mabel?"
"...Okay." replied Mabel.
Having come to an agreement, a path also lit by lamps suddenly formed near the girls, with some arrows also spontaneously appearing to do the obvious: show the only way out of the room. Having seen that, a worried Mabel grabbed Wendy's hand before the two ventured into the path. Once the girls had left, the hundred lamps exploded and the room was covered in darkness, right before some mysterious figures arrived, one of them having...something sharp instead of hands, apparently.
(Meanwhile, at another part of the closet)
Soos slowly recovered consciousness and woke up, only to find himself in a closed room also lit by hundreds of lamps and with Dipper nowhere to be seen. However, once he looked around, he quickly found that Dipper was inspecting the walls.
"What happened, dude?" asked Soos as he got up.
"I'll make it brief: we were separated from the girls during the fall, my flashlight is broken and your glowing underwear is out of power, and we're stuck here in the middle of a closed room." explained Dipper, who was too focused on the walls to turn to the man. "While I initially panicked after figuring this out, I decided that panicking wouldn't help us, and I'm trying to see if there's some hidden lever or something that can open a secret door."
A single eye surrounded in red flames appeared in one of the walls, turning golden before it caused and explosion, one which Soos noticed almost immediately. Dipper was apparently too focused on the walls to even hear it.
Soos then turned around and saw that the explosion revealed a path with some arrows pointing towards it. The path was also lit by lamps, though this one had a different color: a golden one.
"Dipper, I think the path just opened itself." spoke Soos.
Having heard that, Dipper stopped searching the walls and went to Soos, looking at the path with surprise as he approached the man. Once the two were together, Dipper exchanged looks with Soos before he grabbed his hand.
"Lead the way, Soos." said Dipper.
Nodding in response, Soos and Dipper went to the path, the arrows once again turning into bloodied eyes once they went inside. The instant the duo had left the room, the lamps exploded and a mysterious shadow emerged from the walls. The shadow started to transform into a humanoid shape, with two red eyes opening once the shadow had finished transforming.
Seeing the boy and man-child walk together, the shadow thing raised his palm and a purple sphere was created. He looked through the sphere, though what he was seeing could not be seen by anybody but the creature itself, and he broke the sphere in hundreds of pieces when he had finished. Now knowing what he had to do, the figure floated towards the open path, the lights starting to flicker once he went in.
To Be Continued...
