Escape the Night: Freak Show
A/N: Hey, everyone, it's time for the first chapter and to see if our favorite YouTubers can escape the clutches of the Guardian.
Read, review, and enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Escape the Night. I just own any and all characters that I just happen create.
CHAPTER ONE: WHERE ARE THE ORANGES?
When Joey, Lele, and Dawn came back from playing perverse games in order to get the third artifact, they'd had to explain to the rest of the group of why both GloZell and Bart had ended up dying when their names had been written into a murder journal by Dawn and Joey, and they told the truth after Matt went after Lele, still positive that she was in league with the evil.
Shortly after Dawn placed the third artifact with the first two on the mantle, a bone-chilling roar had split the air, terrifying them all. Arthur had informed the group that the evil of the house was aware of what they were intending to do with the artifacts, and it had unleashed its guardian to come after them.
Now they were all in the living room, trying to figure out who or what the guardian was, and what to do next.
"What the hell was that noise?" Joey wondered uneasily while standing in front of the couch that Dawn was sitting on. Earlier, Arthur and Sarah had removed the bodies of GloZell and Bart to a different part of the house and had cleaned up the blood, but the tension was still high because of their deaths.
"Guys," Eva said uneasily, "Something's coming for us."
'The guardian, whatever that might be,' Dawn thought uneasily.
"Something," Sierra stammered, "or someone?"
"That was definitely a something!" Joey insisted. "A someonedoes not sound like that at all!"
'But what can it be?' Benny wondered. 'What kind of creature would the evil use as its' guardian?'
"Guys, don't forget," Oli said, changing the subject, "GloZell and Bart are both dead."
"Another girl, you guys," Sierra pointed out. "Three girls have died. And only one boy has died."
Dawn groaned and covered her face with her hand. "Sierra, if you're about to suggest what I'm thinking you're suggesting…" And she didn't even bother to finish her thought when the only surviving blonde to chose to agree.
Lele nodded. "Yeah."
"I think that's a little sketchy," Sierra added.
"Why is that sketchy?" Joey asked, sitting down next to Dawn.
Benny rolled his eyes. "Um, I think you mean two boys have died," he corrected her, already seeing where she was going with this. "Don't forget about Shane. He's a guy just like Bart was."
"He was poisoned, okay?" Lele stated. "We're literally voting for girls."
"So maybe the evil spirit hates girls for some reason," Tim said sarcastically. "Maybe it's a girl."
"There's a lady-killer on the loose!" Sierra insisted.
"Sierra-" Oli sighed, trying to restore some calm to the situation, but it wasn't going to be easy with Sierra being paranoid.
Sierra overrode him, positive that she was right since she'd finally come to the conclusion that this wasn't a prank gone wrong. "I think us girls have to stick together," she announced, glaring at the boys, daring them to disagree with her.
Joey held up his hand. "Can I be a part of that since I'm, like, gay?" he asked hopefully, and this got some snickering from the girls while Benny and Tim both rolled their eyes, but it did ease the tension somewhat.
"Yes, Joey," Dawn said, patting him on the back, "you can be one of the girls."
"Yay!"
'Sierra is definitely going bye-bye,' Oli thought, although Joey's request had been funny, there was still the matter of finding the final artifact, dealing with the guardian, and getting back home to the modern world. "Look, we can talk about this all we want," he said, struggling to keep his voice calm, "but if we're going to get out of this, we need to stick together. Blaming people and pointing fingers is only going to make things worse."
Matt knew that Oli was right, and they still had to find the final artifact. "We have three artifacts, guys," he reminded them. "We are one more away from getting back to 2016."
"Lele, Dawn, Joey," Oli said, going back to business mode, "when you were upstairs, was there anything else that you found? Any clues? Anything we could use to-"
"Yes," Joey interrupted him by pulling out the circus ticket out of his pocket. "This was with the artifact." And it was a fifty-cent ADMIT ONE ticket to a circus. He turned it over and there was a note on the back, which he read. "'Round and round the room we go'."
"What if there's, like, a carnival ride?" Tim wondered.
"A merry-go-round," Eva suggested.
Oli shook his head. "What goes round and round in this room?"
"There is a record player," Matt pointed out. "That goes round and round."
"Is there a record on it?" Joey wondered, getting up with Dawn, and they went to check, but there wasn't any records on it.
"There's also a phone from back in the day," Matt said, holding up one of those old-fashioned rotary phone things. He cranked it, but nothing happened.
Disappointed, the group began searching the room for anything that could go round and round.
"When you flush a toilet, it goes round and round," Tim joked.
"There's no toilet!" Sierra protested.
"Oh." Tim grinned at her. "Give me a kiss."
Sierra giggled. "You're creepy. Just saying. Trying to make out with me?" And she moved away to help with the search.
Joey went to one of the tables and moved a lamp aside, and he was surprised to find a paper underneath it. "Guys! Is this it?" he wondered and they all gathered around as he picked it up to read it. "'The carnival is coming to town! Follow your nose to the show'!" He then started to smell something. "Wait. Smell."
Eva also sniffed the air. "It smells like oranges."
"Why are we smelling oranges?" Dawn wondered as they tried to trace the smell to its source.
Given that they were still in the living room, Joey wondered if Sierra was wearing some kind of perfume and she swatted him away when he tried to check.
"It's not me, Joey!"
"Oh."
The group left the living room to check other parts of the first floor, trying to figure out where the orange smell was coming from, and they weren't having any luck.
Especially not in the dining room that the creepy mannequins had been in and were now long gone, and they didn't stay in there very long since it smelled disgusting.
"Guys," Oli said when they were all in the library and he pointed out the window to the orange trees. "There are, like, fifteen to twenty orange trees outside…are you surewe have to find it inside?"
No one was paying any attention to him since the orange smell was definitely stronger in the library, and even Benny was certain that they were getting closer to the source that wasn't outside.
Joey and Dawn fiddled with the globe. "Oranges are in Florida. Maybe they're on the map? On Florida?"
"Orange chicken!" Tim called out. "Chinese food! Maybe look at China!" And earned two eye rolls in response as Joey and Dawn moved to search elsewhere in the room. 'Well, I thought it was funny.'
Oli was still sniffing the air, positive that he was getting close while Joey climbed a small stepladder to check the top of the cabinets. "Guys, this smells a lot like oranges right now…"
"There's oranges over here," Joey agreed, searching. "I don't know if it has anything to do with-" He then saw something that made him gasp. "Omigod!" He pointed to the top of one of the cabinets. "Look it! It's a box!"
Oli quickly retrieved the box, making Matt wondered why they hadn't seen it before, and they all returned to the living room.
A/N: Now I have a craving for oranges. Does anyone else? See you all on Tuesday! R&R everyone!