The Poké Maniac

by secretweaponhydreigon

The League is a Pokémon-themed amusement park. During their visit, the protagonist and their ex-boyfriend, Hector, enjoy exploring the park on their first day, marked by nostalgia, virtual battling, and fun photo ops. By nightfall, however, the magic quickly fades when the two find themselves in a nightmare they will have to fight tooth and nail to survive.

6. Part 4

"…really the best time to be passed out…now?"

"…all probably exhausted—I'm surprised we haven't…" I stirred from the darkness behind my eyelids.

"Hector?" I mumbled. The back of my head was vaguely throbbing. I touched my palm to it and winced with pain. Eevee was at my side, trying to lick my face, but I pushed it away.

"Careful. You lost consciousness and hit your head when you fell," Hector said softly. My head was in his lap. I slowly pushed off the ground so I could sit up as he told me to take it easy.

"Where are we?" We appeared to be in a hallway with no furniture, except glittering chandeliers hung from the ceiling all the way down as far as I could see. I tenderly pressed my palm against the back of my head and wished for that smashed block of ice from the freezer. It felt like the pounding had gotten worse and a vague touch of nausea was tickling in my throat. Hector and Noanne looked at each other, seeming alarmed.

"…Do you rememb—" Hector started to say.

"Yes, I remember where we are! This fucking hell house filled with people and monsters trying to kill us! I meant we're not in the room with the giant gate anymore, so where are we?" My voice was loud on my ears, and the lights from the chandeliers seemed to be steadily growing in intensity. Every part of me was beginning to throb. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you." Hector nodded and hesitantly put a hand on my shoulder.

"I moved you into the hallway leading to the third area. Something was starting to smell from that woman's body…" I groaned, not wanting to guess why that might have been. Eevee was whining slightly, but I felt too weak to carry it.

"My head's killing me…" I mumbled. Hector suggested having Eevee ride in my backpack, and I managed to nod. Noanne sighed while Hector situated Eevee in my backpack, and, lucky for her, my fit of rage had passed.

"What's wrong?" Hector asked. I thought he was challenging her to say something snarky so then he could go off, but I realized the mood surrounding us had shifted somehow.

"My oldest sister gets big headaches sometimes, so I usually carry medicine around for her. My other sister took it from me, though, because I wanted to go on one of the water rides. She forgot to give it back after." Noanne's back was turned to us, but the soft lilt in her voice gave away what her face probably looked like. I tried to stand and almost stumbled backward, but Hector caught me. I tried to ignore the pounding and the heat licking the back of my head to the rhythm of my heartbeat and hugged Noanne. She didn't say anything, didn't start crying, didn't hug me back. So we stood there like that for a minute before she pulled away and started walking down the hall. Hector put a reassuring hand on my back, and the pain in my skull felt like it let up just a little bit. We started walking.

As we trudged down the hallway, we eventually came upon a large, spiraling staircase. Noanne had been a good 10 paces ahead of us but didn't wait before beginning her ascent. We called for her to slow down, but she either didn't hear or ignored us. We tried to catch up, but when we caught sight of her rounding the curving steps, she'd scurry ahead again.

"I think she just wants to be alone right now," Hector whispered. Then he tipped his head as if to say as alone as she can be. We relaxed our pace but made sure to listen for her footsteps on the plush carpet. I was thinking about Noanne's sisters as we walked up the stairs. I wondered if I'd seen them in the dining hall. Maybe they had been sitting close to us. I thought about Noanne's mom, how she wouldn't realize until the weekend was over that something had happened to her daughters…

"You're stressing yourself out, aren't you? In there?" Hector said and pointed at my head, which was, thankfully, only pulsing with dull enthusiasm at that point. I scoffed and shook my head, although he smiled like he knew I was lying.

"When do you think people will realize something happened to us?" Hector's smile faded. "Will anyone come looking for us?" Hector reached for my hand and intertwined his fingers in mine. He squeezed it twice, probably to comfort us both. Once for him, once for me.

"If we don't make it out somehow, I'm sure Laryn would come looking for you. Don't you?" he said and chuckled quietly. "And my parents would…eventually try checking in on me and maybe figure out something was wrong if I didn't answer their calls or texts."

"God, Laryn would tear this place down with her bare hands… Is it sick that I kind of wish she were here with us?" Hector looked at me, searching my eyes for something.

"Depends on why, I guess."

"I wanna know what she'd say. Would she be as horrified by everything we've seen? …Everything we've done to survive so far?" Hector looked ahead didn't say anything as we continued to climb the steps. Images of the frozen fingers bouncing off the freezer floor lit up like movie theater screens in my mind.

"You'll see her again. I still believe we'll make it out of here."

"Huh." Hector looked at me expectantly. "You're always so positive. Maybe it's finally rubbing off on me 'cause…I think we'll survive, too." I squeezed Hector's hand back. Then I began to wonder how many more steps we had to go before reaching the top. Part of me felt like we were walking really slowly, but I figured it was the fatigue or my head injury.

"How do you think she's doing?" Hector whispered after we caught a glimpse of Noanne's foot before she jumped up a few steps.

"…Hard to say. Now I'm not so sure if her tough kid exterior is an act or not. We can't forget she murdered that woman." Hector bit his lip in contemplation.

"So, you don't believe the woman was trying to trick us?"

"I wasn't really paying attention to her, so I don't know… I mean, even if she wasn't to be trusted, we could've just tied her up somewhere."

"Wouldn't that essentially be the same thing? Being left vulnerable in this place is a death sentence." I blew some hair out of my face, which ended up falling right back into my eyes, so I impatiently slicked my hair to the side behind my ear.

"I guess you have a point. So, then you're saying she was going to die either way?"

"I'm saying we probably can't trust people who attack us out of the blue."

"Even people who don't attack us right away—Robbie waited for the right opportunity before striking." The image of Gyarados snapping at me flashed through my mind, causing an involuntary shudder to ripple through me. I pondered the implication of what I'd just said as Hector looked at me with concern.

"You're dumber than I thought if you think I'd actually attack you," Noanne shouted from ahead. "And you're definitely as dumb as I think since you think I couldn't hear you. Next time, try sign language or something if you want to talk about me when I'm five feet away from you." My face burned with embarrassment and shame, but I also wanted to trust my gut. I hadn't figured Noanne out yet, but it felt right to be careful about her. She was certainly no sweet teenaged child.

"I…," Hector started to say but apparently couldn't find any words.

"We were betrayed before by someone pretending to work with us, and I almost died because of it. You have to admit your behavior is a little concerning," I called out.

"What? Because I took someone out who threatened us?"

"Because you were ruthless," Hector said. Noanne laughed loudly.

"Well, that lady underestimated me, too, and look where it got her. The way I see it, you two are my best shot at getting out of here alive, so I'm not gonna do anything stupid to mess that up. And that person you were talking about before—did you just leave him tied up someplace? Or did you have to kill him?" I licked my lips and smacked them in frustration. We were losing an argument to a 13-year old.

"Technically, we didn't kill him," I replied, realizing after how it probably sounded. As expected, Noanne burst out laughing. She had come into view but allowed us to be close.

"Technically? He attacked you and ended up dead right after, but you didn't kill him." She'd stopped and turned around on us, her hands on her hips. Noanne wore defiance well. I let go of Hector's hand because I was starting to squeeze it hard from getting annoyed.

"There was another Pokémon there that killed him. I hadn't caught it yet, but it seemed like it was protecting me." Noanne didn't seem satisfied by the answer, squinting her eyes at me suspiciously and pursing her lips.

"What about the guy that was attacking me when you first found me? You killed him, didn't you?"

"Yes, but we thought we had to! It might've been different if we knew then what we know now about trainer battles," Hector reasoned, but Noanne shook her head.

"But you still killed him. And what if I hadn't been there when that lady showed up? You wouldn't have killed her if everything else happened the exact same?" We stood there silently.

"…I don't know."

"Yes, you do. You just want to pretend like you're a good person or something who's too nice to hurt other people when you think you have a choice. Well, I think anyone is capable of anything if the situation is right—you always have a choice. And in my world, I have to fight for myself or I get nothing. If I want food, I make some. If I need money, I take it. If someone pushes me into a locker at school, I push them back," she said and pushed Hector. He balanced himself on the step below as Noanne stepped up to me and looked up, anger in her glare.

"This place is the same way. Maybe not everyone came in as someone who was capable of killing someone else, but no one's going to leave without becoming a killer, one way or another. You might be older than me, but that doesn't mean you're better or smarter than me."

"Hey, you two…," Hector said, but Noanne and I ignored him. It felt like my whole body was on fire, but I wasn't sure if it was because I was also angry or because I believed she was right.

"No one's gonna kill me unless I give up. I'm not gonna be soft and leave it up to luck to survive. Letting people who tried to kill me escape also isn't an option. I know why you saved me when you first found me—because you wanted to help someone in trouble. And you can make all the excuses you want about when it's okay or not to kill, but I'm just saying you've done what you had to for survival, just like me." Tears formed in her eyes.

"Hello?" Hector called and waved in our faces, but I grabbed his hand and held onto it so he wouldn't keep trying to distract us.

"I didn't save you because I'm soft, and I don't regret killing that guy because he would've killed you. You're right…about a lot of things. We've—I've done some things I never thought I could do and all because I'm trying to survive this place. And I'm sorry for not trusting you. We may not necessarily be smarter than you because we're older, but, like it or not, we have a responsibility to protect you now. So you can get back to your mom. Maybe from now on, we just trust our actions are all in the name of self-preservation." Noanne nodded once and wiped the tears from her eyes with both hands. I put my hands gently on her shoulder and stooped slightly to be eye-level with her. "But we can't lose our humanity in here. This place wins if we leave and don't even recognize ourselves anymore, okay?" Noanne didn't look up but nodded her head again. Hector cleared his throat loudly as he put his hand on my arm. "What is it?!" I whispered harshly and looked back at him.

"Look," he said patiently and pointed at the inner wall of the stairwell. It appeared to be spiraling upward, slowly but surely. "This building isn't that tall, but I was confused why we hadn't reached the top of the stairs yet. Then we stopped, and I noticed the wall. The steps must be on a track of some sort and moving downward in a spiral. It probably only acts this way when someone's on the steps."

"Damn this place," I muttered. "Let's hurry to try and make up for the lost distance." The others nodded, and we started half-sprinting up the steps. The faster we ran, the more I felt like we were going nowhere. The stairs were responding to how quickly we moved. We adjusted our speed, comparing our progress to the perceived movement of the inner wall. Eventually, we found a brisk walking pace allowed us to move forward without advancing the backwards pull of the stairs too greatly. After what felt like an hour later, we finally reached the next level.

A rectangular opening in the wall on the right revealed a short hallway and a door. We had to hustle a bit to get far enough up the steps to jump out and land in the hallway. The steps seemed to continue higher up, but to Hector's point, the building wasn't that tall so we figured there was nothing worth exploring. Once we all got off the stairs, they stopped moving.

I let Eevee out of my bag so it could stretch its legs, which it did so happily. I pressed my back against the wall and allowed my body to slide down to the ground, heaving a tired sigh. Eevee scampered into my lap and looked up at me with an almost human wisdom in its eyes. My legs were sore, like I had just finished an intense exercise routine. The others followed suit, sitting on either side of me. Noanne seemed to be fine, but I guessed Hector was similarly out of shape like me. We had never been one of those couples that did active things like hike for hours or go to the gym together. The occasional hike we did take usually entailed driving up a mountain, walking around on some trails, and then driving home. And so it seemed unlikely that he would've taken that up in our aftermath.

A single light above us flickered eerily. The double doors at the end of the hallway were large and wooden but seemed beaten up. It looked like it was worn down from old age and perhaps a few too many kicks in certain areas where there were indentations and splintering.

"There better not be another maze…," Hector mumbled and pushed off the ground to stand up. He extended Noanne and me a hand.

"It wasn't that hard to find the way out," Noanne said and stood up on her own. She walked toward the doors and examined them. I grunted softly as I rose to my feet with Hector's help. We nodded at each other before joining Noanne by the doors.

"Let's get this over with," I said and twisted both handles. The knobs turned and allowed me to push the doors open. A flash of white flew away from my face, and I fell back with a yelp. The others had fallen to the ground, as well, covering their heads. When I looked up again, nothing was there, but after a few more moments, the flash of white appeared again. It looked like an Absol leaping through the air, but it appeared from nowhere and disappeared into nothing once it touched the ground on the other side of the doors. Standing back up and facing away from the doors, I allowed the creature to jump at me, and it passed right through.

"A hologram," Hector whispered as he stood upright again.

"I bet some smug piece of shit is watching us on a monitor and laughing their ass off. I swear, I'm gonna burn this place when we get out," I spat and helped Noanne to her feet. We proceeded through the doorway into a dimly lit room. It was difficult to see much because the lights along the wall were small and fading. The carpet seemed darker than in the previous hallway, but the room seemed to be empty otherwise. Hector pulled out his phone to use its flashlight and shone the light around the small, circular chamber. There was another set of double doors ahead and something that looked like a mining cart on the left, so we went to examine it.

The cart was sitting on a metal track that led into a wall. We couldn't find any switches or power sources, so we weren't sure if the cart could be used. Giving up, we tried to open the doors, but they seemed to be locked.

"How are we supposed to keep going?" Noanne asked.

"Maybe we aren't meant to advance through the area from this end," Hector mused.

"So, we have to go all the way around just to get to the start?" I gasped and felt like giving up. It all seemed so pointless.

"Wait, look," Noanne said suddenly, and we turned to her. She put a hand on the large cart, and the track underneath it lit up a bright blue. When she removed her hand, the lights faded. Hector and I joined Noanne at the cart and put our hands on the cart so the tracks would light up again. That time, with all our hands on the cart, the tracks lit up all the way to the wall. I started to hoist myself up over the edge, and when I was fully inside the cart, the wall started to open, revealing another passage. Figuring that was the only way to move forward, Hector helped Noanne and Eevee get into the cart before jumping in himself. I put Eevee back in my bag.

There was a lever in the cart with a big red knob, which I assumed was used to operate the cart, so I pushed it into the forward position. The cart squeaked into motion, and we were soon swallowed by the dark tunnel. The tracks lit up underneath as we moved, rumbling over the bumps, but most of our view ahead was blocked by the cart. I couldn't see much of the tunnel above, and we had all ducked down in case anything was waiting to jump out at us.

There didn't seem to be any turns, and before long, we exited the tunnel, stopping in a room very similar to the one we'd started in. Hopping out carefully, the room was better lit, but it also looked like it'd seen some action. There was a body on the ground by the opposite wall, and blood was smeared over the ground everywhere. There were doors on our right and left, but only the door on the right was slightly open.

"We came from this way, so this is probably the way into the rest of this area," Hector said, pointing at the tunnel and the door on the right.

"So then this door…," I murmured.

"We're back at the start," Noanne said gravely.

"No point in going back there. Are we ready to go to the next room?" I asked. Hector nodded. Noanne seemed not to hear me at first but then slowly started walking toward the door on the right. I wondered what she was thinking about and shot Hector a worried look before I heard voices from the next room. The three of us froze as the voices seemed to drift closer, then farther, and then close again.

"…everywhere already! Where the fuck could it be?!" someone shouted.

"It's…here somewhere. We've already checked the…like, seven times," another voice said. It sounded like a man and a woman.

"Maybe there isn't one here. We've practically torn the place apart and wasted so much time in this area that maybe someone else already found all the other keys!" the man yelled and hit something. Maybe the wall. He was near the door, but we were still standing in the middle of the room. I slid my hand into my pocket, clenching it around Dragonair's Poké Ball. "You're sure you remember seeing three keyholes in that big gate?"

"I'm positive. I don't know how we'd get past that gate if we aren't supposed to find something to unlock it," the woman responded. "And remember the asshole with the Machamp?" The man sighed.

"Right, I was so mad, I forgot. He took two keys off those brats with the dead mom, and that was back in the forest. Bastard can't get through without the third key, so we can strike a deal. Maybe let's just check this first room again and then do another sweep. There's gotta be someplace we didn't think to look yet. Maybe there's a hidden area in the fucking dark room we missed." When a hand appeared, wrapped around the side of the door, my adrenaline kicked in.

"Noanne, stay here. Hector, have a ball ready, and let's go," I whispered quickly and grabbed Hector's hand. The door swung open, but Hector and I pushed down the couple trying to walk in, ran father into the room, and immediately unleashed our Pokémon. Turning around, the couple we'd knocked down had quickly gotten up and were smiling. They seemed to be wearing matching white and red tracksuits and had sunglasses on, even though the circular room was dimly lit. Blood was everywhere, coating the walls and large portions of the carpet. A large chandelier hung high from the ceiling was acting as a coat rack for several dead human bodies. More bodies were piled against the walls. I also noticed some stray, odd-shaped appendages, most likely from downed Pokémon. Had those trainers killed everyone that had gone through that area?

"Well, well, well," the man taunted as he produced a Poké Ball from his back pocket and tossed it up a few times before releasing the creature inside. "Looks like we have some new players to deal with!" The woman was also smiling and seemed to regard our Pokémon before throwing out a Poké Ball. The metal gates clanged to the ground, blocking off our escape routes as the opposing team's Pokémon formed and the robotic voice boomed over the invisible speakers, marking the start of the battle.

In front of the woman stood a tall figure clad in bright red and yellow feathers. Its head was definitely human but seemed to have a large red beak sewn over its nose and mouth like a mask. The head was also shrouded in a mane of white feathers that covered the chest, as well, although some of the feathers appeared to be splashed with blood and had become pink. Its claws seemed to be the snarled remains of a human hand with the ring and pinky fingers torn off, and then I noticed the red feathers also seemed to be dripping with blood. Blaziken athletically shuffled its feet before assuming a battle-ready stance, its arms poised in front of it like a boxer.

The other Pokémon was slightly smaller and was covered in dark blue and yellow fur. It had the head of a weird dog or maybe coyote whose fur had been dyed. Strange leathery cords cascaded down the back of its heads, and spikes protruded from its chest and backs of its hands, which appeared to be paw-like. I guessed they were from animals as I could see a clear separation at the wrist that was badly covered by the fur. Its legs were dark and seemed hairless, and I thought I could see bone sticking out in some places as the legs appeared to have been molded to resemble Lucario's. It growled viciously at us as it lowered its body, placing one paw on the ground. It glared up at us as its tail wagged from side to side behind it.

Hector had chosen Froslass, and I called Dragonair. We were at a type disadvantage with Froslass, and I actually wished I had called out Mr. Mime instead. As I tried to think of a strategy, the woman called out.

"Waiting for us to make the first move? If you insist! Fire Punch, Blaziken!" The Blaze Pokémon leapt into action but went after Dragonair to my surprise. Dragonair was able to dodge with ease, but Lucario had managed to appear on its side and jammed one of its spikes into Dragonair with a backhand. Dragonair screeched in pain and managed to wriggle away before I saw the trainers running at me. Both of them were wielding weapons—the woman had a knife, and the man had a bent metal pipe.

"Hector!" I screamed as I fumbled for the knife in my bag. A surge of electricity pulsated from Dragonair and paralyzed Blaziken and Lucario, and a blast of frigid wind from Froslass stopped the trainers in their tracks. Ice formed around their feet, causing them to lurch forward and swing their arms wildly to stay upright. The man quickly broke out of the ice by smacking at his feet with the pipe and continued to run at me.

"Blaziken! Melt this with Flamethrower, but you better not fucking burn me!" she cried out. Blaziken struggled to turn toward her as it seemed to be paralyzed. I was still trying to find my knife, and Hector came to assist but was blocked by Lucario, who didn't seem to be as stunned by Dragonair's Thunder Wave. Lucario kicked Hector in the stomach, the bones in its legs cracking loudly in the process, and caused Hector to fly back a few feet, but Froslass seemed to phase in between Hector and Lucario and enveloped Lucario in a strange force field. A floating light within the force field drifted slowly from Froslass to Lucario before disappearing as it touched Lucario. Froslass then faded from sight before reappearing at Hector's side.

The man had reached me and was about to strike before Dragonair intervened and took a strike from the pipe. It hissed angrily and swatted at the man with its tail but missed.

"Too slow!" he shouted playfully before striking at Dragonair again. I'd finally found the knife and managed to jam it into the man's calf while he was distracted with Dragonair.

"You little b—" the man started to say before Lucario punched him in the face. The man staggered and fell to his side. He managed to whack me in the face with the pipe as he went down, but it was only a glancing blow. "What're you—" Lucario then started to beat the man relentlessly, pounding his face into a pulp. I then realized that Froslass had used Confuse Ray on Lucario.

The woman screamed furiously as she tried to chip away at the ice with her knife, but she had been solidly frozen to the ground. Blaziken was also still paralyzed, and Dragonair took it upon itself to wrap its long body around Blaziken and slowly squeezed the life out of it. Dragonair coiled around me protectively once Blaziken breathed its last breath and collapsed to the ground.

Hector had somewhat recovered during this time and helped me up, taking the knife from me when I got back up on my feet. Lucario was still thrashing on the man's face and didn't notice Hector sneak up behind it, even though he was still gasping for air. Hector drove the knife into the back of Lucario's head and twisted it. Then he put a foot on its back and kicked it away to wrench the knife out of its skull. The body twitched a few times before becoming still. Hector wiped the knife on the ground before handing it back to me. Froslass appeared in front of the woman, smiling deviously as it looked back at Hector for instruction, but was just out of reach as the woman wildly slashed at the air with her knife. This caused her to fall forward, so she bent her knees and put her hands out in front to push off the ground. She screamed as the action likely put extreme pressure on her ankles and shins. Then without warning, Froslass and Dragonair fired rays of light at her until she was fully encased in ice. We knew she was dead when the robotic voice declared the battle was over.

Hector and I hugged each other once the gates started lifting and called our Pokémon back. Yet another battle survived. I was angry at myself for being unprepared—the thought had never crossed my mind that the trainers would try to attack us during a battle. I decided I would keep the knife in my back pocket moving forward. It was also interesting that Dragonair battled so well, even though I hadn't issued any commands. Thankfully, it seemed to like me for some reason, but I knew I couldn't afford to be that sloppy again. Hector came through for me again, too.

"Are you okay? You got kicked pretty hard." Hector shook his head and gently put a hand on his gut. He winced.

"I'll just pretend it was like that time…someone ran me over with their bike on my birthday—you remember that?" I nodded. We had gone downtown to walk along the pier and had just decided where we'd grab dinner when a cyclist came out of nowhere and slammed into Hector. There were no major injuries with either party in the accident, but suffice it to say, we did not end up going to dinner after that. Hector was pretty bruised on his torso and called off from work for a couple days but was mostly okay after some rest and a lot of ice packs. For whatever reason, whenever we talked about it afterward, we'd just laugh because it had been so random.

"You can talk, at least," I said, trying not to giggle as I recalled the memory. Hector was smiling, too, but when he started to laugh, he winced with pain again. "Should I call Dragonair back out? We could freeze something to press against the bruise—I mean, I'm sure there must be a big one." Hector had doubled over, holding his stomach with both hands. He started to lift his shirt, allowing a quick peak at some newly formed abs he didn't have before, but then winced. Looked like I was wrong about the whole not exercising thing. But then had he only pretended to be out of breath after the staircase?

"No," he groaned, "I just need a little bit to…catch my breath. And what about you? You…got hit, too, right?" I touched my face where I was hit with the pipe. Right under my eye. It hurt to touch, but when I took my hand off, I could barely feel anything.

"Not even a scratch."

"Well…, you should go get Noanne. She was…probably hiding." He slowly eased himself onto the ground but was still hunched over so I couldn't see his face. I walked around the frozen woman and peered through the doors into the other room. I called for Noanne, but no one emerged. The cart was still sitting on the tracks, but the other door in the room had been opened. I ran back to Hector to tell him Noanne had disappeared.

"Why would she have run?" I wracked my brain for a reason, fearing my earlier distrust of her made her run off.

"She can…take care of herself. Maybe this is for the best," Hector said quietly. I wanted to go look for her, but a part of me worried it could also have been a trap. Maybe she was angry at us but knew she wouldn't be able to take us both head on.

"If you're jumping to conclusions," Hector said, "you should stop while you're ahead."

"What?" I spat. I'd only half heard what he said.

"Stop reading into this. I'm sure she has her reasons. She probably didn't plan it, but something made her leave. We need to keep going, though, or we'll never get out of here, okay?" Hector said, looking up. He reached out to indicate that he needed some help standing, so I hoisted him up with both my hands. One of his arms was still gingerly covering his stomach. "Did you check him for supplies yet?" I shook my head and stepped around Lucario's body to search the man. His face had been replaced with spaghetti, apparently, so I made sure to avoid looking at it again while I dug through his pockets. Nothing. But in one of his back pockets was another Poké Ball. I fished it out and expanded it.

"Look," I said and showed it to Hector. "Should we see if anyone's inside?" Hector nodded so I unleashed the yellow lightning. A figure appeared, to my delight, glinting dully in the low lights. It was covered in red metallic armor over its, shoulder, arms, and legs. For its head, it had just a human skull wearing a red helmet with a giant axe blade protruding from it. The blade also seemed to extend inside the skull as it emerged from the nose and mouth cavities right down the middle of its face. Its rib cage was replaced with circular blades, revealing its spine, and knives protruded from its forearms like fish fins. The bones of its fingers had been fused into one unit so it looked like it was wearing white gloves. Lastly, its feet had been converted into bent swords so that it stood like a strange bird.

"Cute," Hector murmured before I returned Bisharp to its ball. "You can keep it, since you found it."

"Are you sure? I technically have three while you still have two." Hector nodded.

"Eevee doesn't really count, does it? I mean, would you ever use it in battle?" At the mention of its name, Eevee popped up from my bag and licked my ear. I laughed and scratched its head.

"I suppose not. …Oh, too bad we froze the woman, though. She probably had at least another Pokémon, too. Think it'd be worth it to break her out?" Hector thought about it for a moment but shook his head.

"Too much effort. I also don't want to risk it in case she's not actually fully dead. I call dibs on the next one, though," Hector said and laughed, again recoiling from the pain.

"Will you be okay to keep going? There's no telling what fucking nightmares are waiting for us in the rest of this area."

"I'm guessing those two probably cleared out most of them. I'll be fine as long as I don't get kicked again. Let's go." Hector started shuffling toward the door on the other side of the room. I looked back once more, hoping to see Noanne running toward us, but no one was there.

The next area was a hallway, filled with jumping shadows and dilapidated furniture—old, broken-down couches, fallen chandeliers, candlesticks snapped in half. The theme was clearly a haunted house, further accentuated by the tattered red rug that ran the course of the hall, flickering brass sconces, and notched picture frames hanging crookedly on the walls. They contained pictures of people, but the faces had all been rubbed or scratched out. Like every other hall we'd encountered, there were doors on either side of the hall, but none of them seemed to open.

"More fake doors," I mumbled as I tried every door handle we passed. They rattled in place like they'd been loosely screwed in, and one even broke off when I touched it. We proceeded until we came upon a section of the wall covered in blood. There were no bodies in sight or any blood on the ground that would suggest a body was moved, but the blood glistened dully in the dim lights. I noticed a part of it looked like it had been cleanly wiped as the area next to the blood stain was clean.

"It's been a while, but looks like some of it's still wet," Hector whispered, reaching out as if to touch it. "Let's move a little more carefully." We continued until we reached another doorway and entered an area that looked like it had been ripped out of another building. We peered over the wooden railing and looked out over the floor beneath us, maybe thirty feet down, covered in black and white checkered tile. There was a long dining room table, dotted with place settings for over twenty guests, and tall white candles burned in the center. Over the table hung a large silver chandelier. Its arms stretched out tenderly in all directions like an old tree, and crystal adornments hanging off the arms twinkled sweetly in the candlelight. We could also see a fireplace, alive with flame, roaring invitingly in front of a bear rug on the ground and two armchairs facing the fireplace. There was a mantle above it, covered in kitschy items and picture frames, but the eye-catching piece was the trophy staged on the wall. From where I stood, it was partially obscured by the chandelier, but it appeared to be the upper torso of a person, well-muscled and pale. The arms disappeared into the wooden plate the body was mounted on, and the skin slowly peeled away to muscle as it got closer to the neck. The face was entirely bone, but antlers covered in vivid and bright flowers protruded from the forehead. The bust was twisted in such a way to suggest agony, one shoulder jutting up and out in front of the rest of the body, but the skull seemed to sneer with its jaw agape.

On the level we were currently standing on, the floor wrapped around with the railing, granting way to more doors. Dim lights were fixed to the wall in between each of the four doors on either side of the chandelier. On the far side, there was just one door along that wall. The tattered rug continued trailing along the ground, but parts of the wooden floor were splintered in that area, suggesting it may have been possible to fall below.

"I thought those trainers said they wrecked this place—why does it look like everything is untouched?" Hector questioned aloud. I merely shrugged and wished Noanne was still with us. She did say she had a knack for finding things.

"I have a feeling these doors actually open… Should we split up to check them all?"

"…No, we should still stick together. Also, looks like there isn't a way to get downstairs from here, so the steps might be behind one of these doors." I nervously gripped the railing as I eyed the doors. I thought about Hector's observation—why was everything so neat and tidy? Maybe the trainers had exaggerated. In fact, it didn't even look like anyone had been through there let alone searching for a random key that could've been hidden anywhere.

"You're right. Something's definitely off. But wait—remember what that couple said? Someone else had other keys. Could it mean there's more than 3?" I asked and looked at Hector. He nodded slowly as he considered the question.

"Based on that, it sounds like it. That could also mean that some people have already escaped." A smile tugged at the corner of my lips, but then it immediately wilted.

"If people have made it out, then why hasn't any help arrived?" Panic and despair took root in my gut, and I leaned against the banister for support, bracing myself with both hands. Hector shook his head and put his hand on my arm.

"Well, we can't know for sure if anyone's made it out. And even if someone did and called for help, would we know if someone were here to rescue us? They'd probably be combing through the wreckage of the entry areas before reaching us." I nodded to show he was right and that I was jumping to conclusions, but my anxiety was already working overtime.

"So then maybe we should just go back to the dining hall then? Or that room where everyone initially got split up. Anyone arriving to help would find us there pretty easily, right?" Hector then reached across me so he could put a hand on both of shoulders, turned me to face him, and looked me squarely in the eyes.

"I think we're doing what we should be doing. Again, we can't assume anything, so the best bet is to keep searching for the last key so we can get ourselves out. It's gonna be okay, all right? I'm right here with you, and I'm not going anywhere. We will get through this together. We are so close, and I know it's hard. But we can worry about whatever we want once we're out of here. Do you believe me?" My mouth had fallen open in surprise when he turned me, and my lips quivered as he spoke. My eyes teared up, but I didn't want to blink them away. Hector was just a blurry outline in front of me.

"…I believe you, Heck," I whispered. The floodgates opened when Hector pulled me in for a tight hug, and I buried my face in his chest and gripped at the back of his shirt in fistfuls. I missed the feeling of being held by someone. I missed Hector.

We remained that way until I was calm again. Hector kissed me on the cheek before we molted from each other's arms. I gave a half chuckle, feeling my face burn in light but familiar embarrassment as we averted each other's eyes. Wiping the remaining tears away to cover up the awkwardness, I then looked around and pointed to the left.

"Let's start over here?" I suggested. Hector nodded, and we walked quietly to the first door. The knob twisted, and I slowly pushed the door open. It was dark inside, so I pulled my phone out of my pocket to use the flashlight. It didn't turn on. "Shit. I think the battery died. Fuck! I really hope my pictures got through to Laryn. Yours is still good, though, right?"

"…I'm at 5%," he said and produced his phone from his pocket. He turned on the flashlight app. "We'll have to stick to spot checks for now to make it last. We can grab one of those candles downstairs and come back up if we need to." The room appeared to be a plain bedroom but covered in layers of dust and cobwebs. There was a circular rug on the floor, wrinkled in the center, and a lone wooden chair sat in the middle of it facing the door. There was a bed next to a small nightstand, a tall mirror, a desk, and a wardrobe.

"I'll take a quick look," I whispered and stepped inside. Part of me expected something to pop out at me or for the ground to open and swallow me. Instead, the silence in the room crawled into my ears like a night crawler and made me shiver. A sudden feeling of being watched overcame me, and I danced around the room to open the wardrobe and the desk, ruffle the blanket on the bed, and kick up the rug. All of that produced no reaction from the room, so I hurried back to Hector. As I was about to push past him to get back into the hall, he stopped me and pointed to the wardrobe. An odd liquid seemed to be spilling from inside the wardrobe onto the floor. I almost gasped when the liquid built itself into an amorphous blob on the rug. Its slimy shimmer under Hector's flashlight gave off a slightly purple tint. Inside the blob seemed to be a network of veins sprouting from a tiny black beating mass. "Is that…?"

"I called dibs," Hector whispered and slowly pulled out his spare Poké Ball from his bag. Though it had no eyes, the Ditto appeared to be observing us. In Hector's beam of light, dust swirled around the creature in mesmerizing eddies. Without warning, Hector threw the ball at the Pokémon, causing it to be vacuumed into the capsule. The light on the button disappeared without a struggle, indicating that Ditto was caught. Hector quickly retrieved the ball from the ground and joined me out in the hall. "That was easier than I was expecting."

"Think it can actually use Transform?" I imagined the Pokémon attempting to copy the form of something else but bearing the iconic silly face of the cartoon.

"I don't think I want to risk finding out if we get into another trainer fight. Maybe I'll try experimenting later when it makes sense. Let's keep going," Hector said. The next room was locked so we skipped it. The third room had a lit candle inside, so Hector put his phone away. The candle had been sitting on a wooden stool in a corner of the room, but it was empty otherwise. From the looks of it, it hadn't been burning long.

When we got to the fourth room, we could only partially open the door as something seemed to be obstructing it from the other side. I couldn't see much of anything inside the room with the candlelight, so I struggled to stick the light into the room. The first thing I saw was a pale figure hunched over on the ground, causing me to jump back and almost drop the candle. Hector caught me. "What was it?" My hand on my chest, it felt like I was playing catch with my heart and a professional baseball player was pitching it to me.

"There's a body…or something in there. On the ground," I said when I'd calmed down enough to speak. I handed Hector the candle so he could look. After he had a peak, he closed the door.

"It looked like a sheet covering a body maybe. Based on what we found in the other rooms, I think it'd be a good idea to get in there and check…"

"How? We can't push the door open any farther. …Maybe we could use one of our Pokémon to break the door down?" Hector scrunched his face at me.

"…I don't think that'd be a good idea. We'd attract a lot of attention. Or it could set off a trap or something." I opened the door again as much as it would allow and stepped back a little bit to examine the width of the crack. It was too narrow for Dragonair or Milotic to slither through. "Ya know…?"

"What?" I muttered. Hector had a look on his face that told me I wouldn't like his idea.

"Eevee could probably squeeze in there." At the mention of its name, Eevee poked its head out of my bag and yipped quietly into my ear. I protectively put a hand over its face.

"You be quiet!" I said to Eevee, then turned my attention back to Hector. "We are not sending Eevee in there! What if that thing is alive and tries to kill it?" Eevee started licking my hand. "What would it even do in there? It's too small to move whatever's blocking the door out of the way."

"I was thinking it could remove the sheet. Then we could see what it's covering."

"I don't think that's a good idea. It's clearly a trap." I crossed my arms sternly, but it was difficult to maintain a serious expression because Eevee started licking my ear. "Cut that out!" I shouted and pulled Eevee from the bag and cradled it in my arms. "You'd really risk sending this adorable poof into the dangers of a dark room with a monster sitting on the ground right there?" Hector then crossed his arms.

"Eevee is still a Pokémon—it can defend itself if needed."

"Using what? Tail Whip?"

"Fine. How about I have Froslass on standby, and if something tries to attack Eevee, I'll freeze whatever it is."

"I don't know, Hector—that sounds like it'd attract a lot of attention," I spat mockingly. "We might as well just break down the goddamn door in that case."

"No, there's still a chance that there is no trap or monster, and Eevee just helps us look what's underneath that sheet. It's a risk I think we should take." I scratched behind Eevee's ears as I thought about it.

"Easy for you to say since you to say… But I guess Eevee is probably pretty fast, huh? And it did manage to survive until we found it…" Hector nodded in agreement. "Fine," I groaned, "but if something bad happens to Eevee, I'm taking Ditto from you." Hector put his hands up in surrender. I let Eevee jump down from my arms and commanded it to go into the room after Hector called out Froslass. Obediently, Eevee squeezed itself through the crack, appearing almost too fluffy at first to fit. "Okay, now pull that sheet off and then come right back out, okay?" Eevee bit onto a corner of the sheet and slowly pulled it back to reveal a horribly deformed and desiccated person in a sitting position, hugging their knees. Their mouth was stretched into a perpetual scream, gagged by a Poké Ball. "Umm, well, I can't say I was expecting that. Okay, time to come back, Eevee!"

"Wait, really? We should take the ball! Have Eevee try to smack it free!" Hector shouted, looking at me incredulously.

"We don't need it! In fact, we probably have too many Pokémon! I can barely keep track of them anymore."

"You're being ridiculous," Hector muttered and crossed his arms. "Come on—Eevee is already inside. We might as well finish what we started."

"Says the person whose Pokémon is safe outside of the dark room with a dried-up zombie in it. And, objectively, this screams 'trap' to me. Every other Poké Ball has been hidden or stashed somewhere dangerous. Why should we believe this one we can take for free? And are you really gonna fight me on this when you gave me so much shit for the ice cube Poké Ball?"

"Okay, that was different because we were literally freezing to death, and taking this ball doesn't require we smash up any dead fingers," Hector said, an odd look of superiority plastered on his face.

"No, it just requires we pry it from a dead body's mouth. How is that any less fucked up?" Hector concentrated on me as he thought of a response. I swore I could hear the hum of the lights intensify as he focused his energy on finding a quippy retort.

"Ya know what? Fine, I was wrong, and you were right—we need all the resources we can get. Call Eevee back. I have another idea. Froslass, return." I coaxed Eevee back out to me. It was all too happy to return to my arms, and then I tucked it back into my bag as Hector pulled out another Poké Ball. "Go, Ditto." The translucent purple blob splashed from the ball onto the ground inside the room.

"What're you doing?"

"Experimenting. Ditto, use Transform to turn into me and grab the Poké Ball from that body's mouth."

"Hector, are you ser—" Suddenly, Ditto started undulating as its internal organs began to glow an eerie green. Then it seemed to explode as though the cells of its body were rapidly multiplying. Before long, a naked version of Hector stood on the other side of the doorway, staring back at us with one eye visible in the crack of the door and half of a soulless but creepy smile. "What the fuck… It looks exactly like you…" The sense of dread spreading from my chest was almost indescribable. I felt like I'd just seen something not only impossible but wrong. A strong urge to reach out and touch the double seized my thoughts, but I managed to resist the temptation. I had a gross feeling its skin would feel practically human.

Hector gasped with amusement, and a smile stretched across his face. He leaned forward to get a better look at Ditto, who, upon closer inspection, was literally a perfect copy. If it had the same clothes on, or any clothes for that matter, and was standing side-by-side with actual Hector, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell them apart. A small part of me wondered what it'd be like to stare into an exact copy of myself.

"Go ahead. Get the Poké Ball," Hector urged, and Ditto slowly turned around, the smile on its face appearing frozen. There was nothing cute or cartoonish about the way it looked. With some difficulty, it eventually managed to pry the ball from the corpse's jaw but only after using its other hand to snap the jaw open wider. The second the ball was removed from the body's mouth, I thought I heard a snapping sound, and the objects in the room began to shake. "Come back!" Hector cried. Ditto, nonchalantly turned, its hand with the ball outstretched. Hector returned it to its ball, and I managed to catch the quarry before something in the room collapsed, slamming the door shut. A cloud of dust assailed us, and we fled farther down the hall to escape it. Afterward, I glared at Hector and threw the Poké Ball at his chest. Something rattled inside. Hector examined it. "This isn't a real Poké Ball."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Hector didn't say anything but twisted the ball open to reveal a shriveled eyeball with a note attached to it. I sighed loudly.

"What does it say?"

"'Watch yourself.'" He threw the eyeball over his shoulder, and it made a gross thud and splat noise. I wanted to say I told you so, but it seemed pointless. "I know, I know," Hector suddenly said. "You don't have to say it." I sighed again, more quietly that time, and shook my head.

"I wasn't going to say anything. You took a risk, but it didn't pay off. At least we know that room is cleared…technically." His expression lightened. He seemed surprised and dropped the plastic pieces of the ball.

"Oh…well, thanks." Honestly, I was more thrown off by what happened with Ditto but didn't know what to say about it, so I suggested we move on. We searched the rooms on the other side of the area but found nothing useful. We returned to the locked door.

"I still can't get over that this area seems untouched… Why would this door be locked if those trainers had already come through here?" I rattled the handle again, but it was, obviously, still locked. Hector shrugged his shoulders.

"No point in worrying about it now. How about we break this door down? I feel like we've made a lot of noise, and nothing's come to attack us yet," I suggested.

"Can't beat that logic." Hector tried kicking the door, gladiator-style, jostling it and causing dust to jump from its surface. A loud crack split the air. I was prepared to get jumped by something, but nothing happened. Hector kicked the door again, creating a small hole in the center. He continued until the hole was big enough to reach through and unlock the door from inside. It was a small room that only contained a closet door of some kind. Upon opening it, we discovered a long dusty hallway, lit by a length of oil lanterns on a wire. It looked like we were about to enter a coal mine or something. The wood frames supporting the rotting beams above looked like they might give out at any second, but there was a quality to them that also appeared to be manufactured to look old. The ground was covered in sawdust or sand and crunched beneath our shoes, and the smell lingering in the air was oddly fresh and industrial. It reminded me of anytime I walked into a Home Depot.

Eventually, the hall led us to a small set of stairs on the right leading down. The steps were wooden, steep, and unevenly cut, so we took our time with our descent. When we reached the bottom, we were greeted only with darkness. The candle we'd found was still going strong, but we had the idea to go back up the stairs to see if we could take one of the lanterns down. Before we could turn around, though, a gate fell from above and blocked our passage back up the stairs. Then the ground started to shake and threw us off balance. In a sudden jolt, I slammed into a wall on my right, Hector practically sandwiching me to the wall, as a loud grating sound screeched in the darkness. I felt like we were on a carnival ride where they strap people to a wall inside a spinning room. When the movement stopped as abruptly as it started, we were tossed to the left, crashed into the other wall, and ended up on the floor. All the commotion had extinguished our candle.

"Fuck! What the hell was all that?" Hector spat and presumably tossed the candle away when I heard something clatter on the ground. We felt around in the dark for each other and helped each other stand. Hector rustled around a bit before shining a light on the ground. "My battery is literally at 1%, so let's try to find our way out of here quick."

"Oh, wait! I forgot about my battery!" I gasped. I took off my backpack and rummaged through it to find the smooth block at the bottom. It was slightly damp. "Fuck… It might not work because it was in the water…" I fiddled for a bit before managing to plug my phone into the battery. No signal indicating my phone was charging appeared. "Shit—it's no good."

"That's okay. We'll just move forward carefully." We each took a step forward when I heard something click. Then the ground started shaking again, so we each braced ourselves against the opposite walls. I was bathed in darkness again when a partition shot up from the ground and separated me from Hector.

"Hector! Oh my god—Hector!" I screamed, pounding against the barrier. It felt like thick glass, but I couldn't see Hector's flashlight at all. I couldn't even hear if he was pounding back. My heart was beating wildly again, making it more difficult to concentrate, but I listened quietly until I heard a muffled voice.

"…can hear me, find…out! …e careful!" I guessed he told me to find a way out.

"Okay!" I yelled back as loudly as I could. My legs began to shake uncontrollably, even though I knew the ground no longer quaked. I felt the walls start to close in on me in the darkness. I had no light, and I was alone. If there was anything else in the dark with me, I might as well have surrendered to it since I couldn't see or even begin to fight back if I got attacked. Slowly, I reached an arm and leg out in the shadows and inched forward. Eventually, I bumped into another wall and decided that it would probably be easiest to just follow the wall. I kept an arm and leg out in front of me, though, in case there were any traps on the ground or objects in front of me I might crash into. My heart was pounding furiously, but I managed to keep it under enough control to avoid hyperventilating. I thought Hector having his phone was lucky, even if only for a little while. It would help him get through the dark faster, and I thought he might be able to find a way around to get to me.

Then I got an idea. I set my bag on the ground and pulled Eevee out.

"I hope this works. Eevee, use Swift!" I shouted. Holding Eevee out in front of me like a giant flashlight, I was hoping it would spit a ray of stars to light the way, even if only for a few seconds at a time. Eevee let out a weak mewl, and I imagined it looking back at me in confusion. For whatever reason, it didn't know how to use that attack. "It was worth a shot…," I sighed and put Eevee back in my bag before slinging it onto my back again. Maybe one of my other Pokémon would be useful. I summoned Mr. Mime, and the brief flash of light from its Poké Ball illuminated a winding path. The walls were all mirrors. I gasped when I thought I saw something shift in the dark ahead of me when the light had faded and instinctively latched onto Mr. Mime's bone-thin arm. It croaked quietly to acknowledge my presence. Somehow, it was comforting not to be completely alone, even if it was with the creature that started it all.

I cleared my throat and let go of Mr. Mime, mostly so that it could use its moves unencumbered.

"Okay, let me think… Use Flash!" Nothing happened. "Fuck… What other attacks would generate light? Well, it is a Fairy type, so maybe use Dazzling Gleam!" I couldn't help but smile when sparks of light formed around Mr. Mime's fingertips, and a flurry of flashing sparkles scattered in front of us. Some bounced off the mirrors while others quickly extinguished against the ground. It was enough to know where to walk so I took Mr. Mime's arm again and shuffled forward until there was a turn in the path. I put my free hand on the mirror to my left to make sure we didn't turn too far. I had Mr. Mime use Dazzling Gleam again, but my hope faded when I discovered there were multiple branching paths. It was also difficult to tell where we could even walk because all the mirrors were reflecting images of us off each other. I really hoped Mr. Mime didn't have a limit on its attacks.

We proceeded very slowly using that process until Mr. Mime eventually became too tired to use Dazzling Gleam any longer. I tried having it use Psychic and Confusion, remembering they generated some light, but Mr. Mime didn't respond. I returned it to its Poké Ball, and the light from the capsule helped me take my next step. Then I was in the dark again, and the fear crept back into my shoulders. I was about to send out Dragonair to have it use Thunder Wave, but I was afraid of exhausting its energy in case I would need to fight. There was no way of knowing if enough rest would allow them to use their moves again, so I rationalized that I'd have to get through that area on my own. A part of me was still holding out for Hector to find me, though. I called out for him again to see if maybe he could hear, but only silence responded.

"Okay, I can do this," I murmured to myself. Hearing my own voice helped me maintain some sanity. I edged forward until I hit a wall and then made the decision to go right whenever I could. That worked for a few times until I reached a complete dead end, so I had to turn back. I'd lost track of which turns I'd already made, so for a while, I was literally randomly wandering around. I crashed into random objects a few times—a broken chair, a rusty pipe, and even half of a dirt-encrusted Poké Ball. I wondered why there were no bodies in the maze, but then I figured it was best to only concentrate on finding a way out.

After a while of being disoriented, I developed the keen sense that something was following me in the dark. With each step I took, I swore I could hear a very light sloshing sound, like someone was walking around in wet shoes. When I stopped to listen, though, there was nothing but silence. It was so quiet, I thought I could hear the dust stirring in the dark. My eyes had also not adapted very well to the blackness, even after all that time, like a film had formed over them. Fear started to seep back into my muscles, and I was afraid I'd freeze up or fall apart after each step. I imagined something cold and wet reaching out for me in the dark, waiting for a moment when I least expected to be pounced upon.

Then, it hit me like a bus. A smell so rancid, I thought something might have been rotting right inside my nostrils. It came and went suddenly, but I remembered the smell from somewhere.

Muk.

Right after coming to the realization that the Sludge Pokémon was stalking me in a pitch-black funhouse mirror maze, the slopping sound started on its own. After each wet plop was a scraping sound, like something being dragged along the ground. Muk was going in for the kill. Panicking, I tried to escape from the sound, crashing into mirror after mirror, probably signaling my location as my face smacked against the glass. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a red glow. My first instinct was to run from that, as well, but then I realized it was that Duskull again! Somehow it knew I was in danger once more.

It glowed a few times before disappearing. When I caught up, it appeared ahead of me. This happened a few times before it stopped reappearing, but at that point, I ran into a wall that felt like a door. Muk had somehow kept pace with me, and its poisonous odor was only getting stronger. Of course, the door was locked, so I resorted to ramming my shoulder against it, causing it to rattle but not budge. I tried feeling around for other details on the door and discovered a large metal ring fastened in the middle of the upper half of the door. I pulled it toward me, pushed it away, but then found that the door needed to be pulled down. It would spring back up if I let go of the ring, though. With both hands, I pulled down as hard as I could, and the faintest bit of light bled through from the top. While the door was still heavy and hard to move, I was eventually able to lower it enough that I could put one foot on top of the door.

As Muk seemed to scrape closer and closer to me, I lost my concentration for a moment, and the door started ascending again, almost crunching my foot before I pulled it out and fell to the ground. The smell had become unbearable, so I had to hold my breath, but my momentary loss of balance forced me to inhale through my mouth. It tasted like someone had vomited directly into my lungs, almost causing me to throw up. I managed to resist the nausea and quickly got up again to pull the door down but couldn't seem to figure out how to get over it while keeping the door from springing up again. Then the smell intensified even further, which seemed impossible. In a last attempt, I pulled down as hard as I could while crouching and then jumped over the door. Miraculously, I landed on the other side as the door popped back into its closed position. I plopped on my stomach right before hitting the wall in a long empty hallway that stretched to the left and right. The walls were gray, uncovered stone, but the ground was carpeted like the rest of the mansion. Orb-like lights dangled from the ceiling on black wires and cast a muted yellow glow everywhere. Muk slammed against the door a couple times and startled me as I looked about before the door stopped rattling.

On the ground, I took my backpack off and slid my back up against the wall and buried my face in my hands as I wondered why the nightmare wasn't over yet. Eevee crawled out of the bag and sat patiently next to me as I cried. No tears came out, though.

"Why the fuck didn't you help me sooner!" I screamed into the silence, wondering if Duskull was still around. "But thanks for the help," I muttered soon afterward and wiped at my nose with the back of my hand. I felt filthy and sweaty, I was sure there were stray flecks of blood all over my skin and clothes, and I could still smell Muk's stench in my nose. If it had been possible, I would've stripped naked right there to switch into something different just so I could burn the clothes I was wearing.

Eventually, I reached out to pet Eevee and found that it helped to calm me down. Next to me, I noticed a small rock and wondered if Eevee would fetch it if I threw it. When I tossed the rock, Eevee looked at where it landed, looked back at me, then went to examine the rock. It returned without the rock. I continued to pat Eevee until it went to curl up in my bag and fall asleep. I wished I could've done the same.

"Hector's gotta be almost out. Maybe I should look around for other possible exits." I quietly stood up and looked down both ends of the hall. On my right, there was another door about twenty steps away. At the end of the hallway was a set of stairs leading up to another level. On the left end, there was a turn in the hall, and peaking around the corner, there was some kind of contraption. It was all the way at the end, and I didn't feel comfortable going to investigate by myself. I went back to sit against the wall in between the two doors and waited for Hector to emerge.

I waited what felt like a long time before I thought to see if Mr. Mime was capable of fighting again. For some reason, I felt it was happy to see me, even though its expression didn't—probably couldn't—change. I also had to admit to myself that I wasn't as afraid of it anymore, which was maybe a larger representation of how I was feeling about being in that situation. Thankfully, when I commanded Mr. Mime to use Dazzling Gleam, the brilliant flashes of light sprayed from its fingertips and marked the stone walls where the sparks collided. I called Mr. Mime back into its ball and waited a little longer.

I felt myself fading away into a dream when one of the doors clattered open. Immediately, I scooped up my bag with Eevee inside and strapped it on, but I was surprised to see Noanne tumble out of the darkness. I ran over and kneeled to give her a proper hug when she noticed me and held on tightly until she pushed me away.

"I can't breathe! Geez!" she shouted and laughed. That was when I noticed something by her feet. It looked like a lumpy collection of potatoes inside a yellow sack decorated to look like Pikachu, floppy ears and a scraggly black tail and all, except that a dozen or so human fingers protruded from the bottom of the sack like spider legs. Mimikyu's disguise was sloppily colored on with crayon and runny red paint. Or maybe blood. Noanne returned it to its Poké Ball and tucked the ball into her coat. "I know you're not supposed to, but I checked under the cloth. It's some guy's severed head with fingers sewn—"
"I get the picture, thanks," I spat quickly, not wanting to imagine the construction of the Disguise Pokémon. "Okay, first of all? Why did you leave without telling us, and where did you go? Where did you find Mimikyu? And how did you get through the maze this time? And—"

"Oh my gosh—calm down! I was going to tell you what happened anyway," she said, crossing her arms. I nodded and waited patiently for her to continue. She looked down, kicking her foot at the ground, maybe nervously, and then cleared her throat. "So, when I realized we were close to the starting point, I…I got the idea to see if my sisters were really dead. It looked like some people had gone back into the dining room and 'sacked all the food. But it also looked like there was another fight in there. The big table was broken up even more and tossed all over the room, and there was more blood all over the place than I remember from what Mr. Mime did. Anyway, I didn't find my sisters in there." I sighed loudly and put my hands on Noanne's shoulders.

"Oh, god, Noanne, that must've been such a relief. They must've gotten out."

"Maybe. I don't know what it means except that they didn't die in that room after all." I wasn't sure how to respond to that. "Anyway, I went into the back, where Mr. Mime had originally appeared from. It was just a boring room that led to a boring kitchen, but in one of the connecting hallways, I found a secret door that led me to some kind of workshop. There were a bunch of broken Poké Ball parts, but I ended up finding two that worked. One, I used to catch Mimikyu when I found it, and the other," Noanne said as she pulled a ball from her pocket, "you can have." I smiled and took the ball, carefully dropping it into my bag. Eevee licked my hand before I withdrew it. "When I was walking back, I found the path that led into the forest area, I think, but I heard some voices and decided not to check it out. And to answer another of your million questions, I found Mimikyu when I got back to this area and passed through the piano room—"

"Wait, a piano room? What're you talking about? Hector and I didn't see a piano when we walked through."

"How could you not see it? It was in, like, the first room after where you fought those douchebag trainers. There were tall windows, which were obviously fake, a bar, some leather chairs, and some rubber plants, lamps, and a giant piano." I considered what Noanne was describing. There was obviously no reason for her to make up what she'd seen, but it was clearly not the upstairs balcony Hector and I had passed through. "There were some dead people in there but nothing ridiculous."

"Okay, whatever," I said impatiently, not sure what those details could really entail about the area. "So Mimikyu helped you in the dark room then?"

"Yeah, probably a ghost thing. Trevenant probably could've done the same for me, but it's not like it was that hard to navigate. I just hung onto the tail and followed it as it led me around. After I passed through the piano room, there was this weird, bouncy hallway that led down into the dark room. It was basically one straight path with a couple random walls in the way when I dropped in."

"Dropped in?"

"Yeah, I don't know how else to describe it. At the end of the bouncy hall, there was a giant hole in the ground. I called out Mimikyu to see how deep the hole was, but the light from the ball showed it wasn't that far down, so I jumped."

"Okay…and which side were you—oh, er," I said, stumbling with how I wanted to ask the question. "When you got into the dark room, do you know if there were mirrors on your right or left side?" Noanne understandably gave me a puzzled look.

"I couldn't really see anything…, but I think the wall I was touching at the start felt like glass. A-a-and I think I touched it with my right hand, so it was on my right. I think." The pit of my stomach seemed to grow larger. She was definitely in the same dark room we had been, and if she was remembering correctly, she went through on Hector's side. And if it was a straight shot, why didn't she run into Hector? "…lo? Hello? Have you finally cracked?" Noanne said, waving a hand in my face to pull me out of my thoughts.

"Sorry, it's just that Hector ended up on that side, too. When we first got to the dark room, there wasn't a glass wall at the start, but we triggered a trap or something, and a mirror ended up separating us. I had to go through a maze to get out. You're sure it was just one path to get through?" Noanne nodded, a look of concern spreading on her face.

"So then you're telling me you don't know where Hector is?" I didn't want to acknowledge her question but eventually ended up nodding. I thought she could tell I was worried and patted me on the shoulder.

"Let's see if we can get back in and look for him. I can let you borrow Trevenant to help look." We returned to the door Noanne had come through and examined it. There didn't seem to be any handles or knobs on that side, though. We tried pushing it, shaking it, and hitting it, but nothing worked. I also thought to try pulling it down, but my hands slid uselessly against the slick metal door as there was nothing to grab onto.

"Stand back—I'll have Dragonair freeze it, and then we'll break it down," I said, and grabbed Dragonair's Poké Ball from my bag. Noanne took a few steps back, but then the door startled to rattle from the other side. I jumped back, as well, when the door swung outward, and a disheveled Hector tumbled onto the ground in front of us. His hair was messy, like he'd just walked through a tornado or woke up from a particularly long nap, and his clothes also seemed to fit crookedly on him.

"Hector! Are you okay? What happened?" I said as I knelt and tried to help him sit up. He looked at me like he had no idea what I just said. "Hector?" Noanne remained standing by the wall. Her brows were furrowed with concern, and her arms were crossed.

"Wh… Where…are we?" Hector finally said after seemingly struggling to find his words. I looked at Noanne, even more worried, but she didn't react.

"Umm, I'm not really sure. We came down some stairs, so I'm guessing we're in some kind of basement." Noanne hummed in thought and then shrugged her shoulders when I looked at her again. "You were in there for a really long time—what happened?" Hector rubbed the back of his head like he'd been hit there. I looked, but there was no blood. He then started blinking hard like there was something in his eyes.

"I think I got attacked…by something… And all my stuff is gone. My Poké Balls…," he muttered and looked around with a lost expression.

"Fuck," I whispered. "Okay, can you stand?" I asked and helped him get to his feet. I straightened out his clothes a bit and smoothed his hair over the way he had it styled before. I didn't know what to make of his story, but at least he seemed fine for the most part.

"Did you see any Pokémon in there?" Noanne asked us.

"I'm pretty sure Muk was chasing me the entire time; it almost got me, too," I said. The memory of its stench made me almost dry heave.

"There might have been something. I can't remember seeing anything," Hector replied.

"Do you have an idea of what happened?" I asked Noanne, desperate for any kind of explanation.

"I'm not sure," she said, shrugging, "but maybe he had his dream eaten. Could explain the confusion."

"And there are ghost types here… Maybe there was a Haunter floating around on that side of the room. Why would it take his stuff, though?"

"A trainer maybe? Just hiding in there, waiting to see who walks by?" Noanne suggested. How would they have gotten out, though? Unless there was another way to leave that room… "Or maybe you accidentally left everything in there?"

"Whatever," I sighed. "We've wasted enough time here. We should keep going." I started directing us toward the stairs but then remembered the odd machine at the other end of the hall. "Oh, wait! I saw something earlier that I couldn't check out. Can we take a quick look?" We walked down to the other side of the hall and found a device with two glass boxes. Objects similar to the Thunder Stone sat in each box; one was blue, and the other was green.

"An Ice Stone and Leaf Stone?" Noanne murmured. "Do you want to try and get one?" I bit my lip in thought. There seemed to be a lot of traps in that area, so I was suspicious. I shook my head.

"…Actually, no. I just wanted to see what it was, but we should just keep going. I'm sure this is probably another trap." No one argued, so we walked back to the other end of the hall and up the stairs that turned to the right. At the top of the stairs was the room Hector and I had seen from the balcony. "Aha! We've seen this room," I said excitedly, feeling like we were on the right path.

"From upstairs," Hector said. "I think I remember that." I was relieved to hear that, which was a small victory I was willing to take in the face of every other thing I was still questioning, like how did Noanne pass through a completely different room? What actually happened to Hector in the dark? Could someone else have already found all the keys?

"You've already seen this room? How?" Noanne asked. I described the area we had passed through before getting to the dark room.

"We found a room with some stairs that led down to the dark room, and then… Oh, wait. There was shaking, like the room was moving…"

"So, is it possible that…?" Noanne murmured.

"The rooms are rotating. That's why it seemed like no one had been there yet. The trainers we fought said they searched everywhere for the key, but they must not have known there are other rooms they couldn't access," I said.

"Hmm, I kinda remember feeling like the ground was shaking a little bit when I re-entered the room with the cart, so maybe there's a switch that makes the rooms change." I thought for a moment about what the construction would have to look like. The dining room we were in was probably part of the rotation, so it'd be worth checking out since no one had previously explored it. But if there wasn't a key there, either…

"Let's worry about that after we search this place. Maybe this room has a key," I offered. Noanne wasn't optimistic but went off to investigate the Sawsbuck. Hector and I rummaged around the dining table, lifting plates and peaking under the tablecloth. There was nothing. I took a candle just in case there were any other dark rooms we'd have to traverse through. Next, we examined the other doors around the table and discovered they were all locked.

"No luck," Hector said after attempting to twist the knob on the fourth door in the room.

"Hey! I think I found something," Noanne suddenly called. We turned to see Noanne sitting on the arm of a tall multi-limbed creature covered in pieces of bark and foliage. The creature had six human legs protruding from one torso that appeared to be pieced together from three different bodies. Thick arms erupted from the sides, ending in bony claws covered in leaves and wood. For its head, there was a skull with pieces of rotting flesh clinging to it underneath a wooden helmet that curled into spikes and thorns. It was also covered in leaves.

"Is this your…Trevenant?" I asked as Hector and I approached. Trevenant seemed wary of the roaring fireplace as it tried to stand steady. Noanne was reaching forward for something above the mantle, behind the Sawsbuck trophy. I walked around to see that she was grasping at what looked like a silver knife sticking out behind the trophy. She stretched farther and accidentally slid off Trevenant's arm, grabbing onto one of the antlers. This caused the trophy to rotate sideways, and something in the fireplace shifted, while the object that had been lodged behind the trophy fell to the floor with a clear clang. Hector caught Noanne and helped her get back to the ground.

"Whoops," she said and giggled. She had accidentally torn off one of the antlers. The trophy was trickling blood from the tear site. I picked up the silver object and discovered it appeared to be a handle of some sort. One end of it was a sharp point, but the entire length of the object was angular and blade-like, so it had to be handled carefully. The other end appeared to have a socket, like it attached to something.

"It kind of looks like a crank," I said and showed the others. "Not sure you could turn it, though—it's really sharp."

"We'll probably need it later," Hector said. I was going to put it in my bag, but I didn't want to risk cutting Eevee, and the front zipper pocket was too small. "I'll hang onto it," Hector said. "Don't worry—I'll be careful." I nodded and handed him the crank.

"Also, look," Noanne said and pointed into the fireplace. The wall behind the flame had disappeared. "A secret room!"

"How do we put the fire out, though? Hector's Milotic is gone…," I said.

"Oh, I forgot about that. Well, you won't be any help with this," Noanne said and called back Trevenant into its ball.

"Hold on, I'm pretty sure I saw a—yup!" Hector said as he turned back toward the table. He quickly went to retrieve a pitcher of water that was on the table and splashed it into the fireplace. The flames disappeared with a wet hiss as smoke and steam rose from the smoldering pit. I grabbed a napkin off the table and fanned away the smoke. When it seemed like it'd be safe to walk through, we stepped into the fireplace one after the other to explore the hidden room.

My candle came in handy as there were no lights in the room behind the fireplace. The walls and floor were made of cool stone, and there was a damp smell in the air. Waving the candle around, the room was small but contained a familiar looking machine.

"Hector, this is like the one we found in the freezer!" I said and hurried to blow the dust off the screen. To my pleasant surprise, there was a lightning symbol on the glass. Noanne giggled excitedly.

"Is this what I think it is?" she asked. I nodded and handed Noanne the candle so I could set my bag down. I let Eevee out and retrieved the Thunder Stone. Eevee examined the machine curiously, pacing around the base of the device. Like the other machine, it had two buttons underneath the panel on the front of the machine—a black one and a yellow one. The glass popped open when I pushed the black button, and Eevee suddenly jumped up into the open compartment. I had a feeling it knew what the machine did. "Okay, Eevee, we're doing this," I said and closed the glass. It looked at me expectantly as I pushed the yellow button, causing a small compartment to appear below the compartment Eevee was inside of. I slid the Thunder Stone inside, and when I closed it in, the stone seemed to be sucked into the machine as it whirred to life. Lights sprang to life on top of the machine that I hadn't noticed, and the device started humming and shaking. The three of us jumped back when a blast of electricity filled the chamber with Eevee in it. Its screams echoed wildly in the small chamber, and I wanted to help but wasn't sure what would to do.

Eventually, the electricity being generated in the chamber made the machine start to smoke before a small series of explosions cracked the glass. We all turned our backs and huddled together as small pieces of glass sprinkled the room, and when it seemed like the machine was dead, we turned to see a creature larger than Eevee had been, its fur bristling with electricity. Jolteon's mane seemed singed in some areas while others glowed an electric blue. Somehow, the machine had transformed its appearance as the once cute face of Eevee was replaced with the countenance of a battle-worn demon. It howled before approaching me, eyeing me warily, but I could still sense it recognized me. I slowly reached my hand out to touch it, fully expecting to be shocked, but when I made contact with its head, I just felt the coarseness of its fur. It growled affectionately as I scratched behind its ears.

"Guess you won't fit in my bag anymore, huh?" I said playfully. Whereas Eevee had been the size of an adult chihuahua, Jolteon was easily the size of an adult golden retriever. Noanne went to retrieve my bag for me. "Thanks. Now let's get out of here."

Once we were back in the dining room, our search continued. Hector grabbed a knife from the table and tried jamming in the locks of the doors. It worked on one before the knife snapped. Inside the first room was pantry filled with sacks of severed human heads. We quickly closed the door on that room. Noanne successfully picked the lock on the next door with some bobby pins, but it only contained a headless doll. Noanne was able to open the next door, as well, and we discovered a hallway that wrapped around the dining room and its other rooms.

"Let's look in the last room before we check this out," I suggested. The last door seemed resistant to Noanne's lockpicking skills, so we just decided to kick it until it fell in. That room was circular and was mostly empty except for a metal table in the middle of the room. On the table, an orb-like object was rolling in a tight circle. The orb was translucent, although the top half appeared to be tinged red. Inside the orb was a severed head of a man that was attached to a steel plate at the bottom of the orb. Lines of static crawled up the sides of the orb inside the casing, and the head's eyelids fluttered rapidly. When it seemed to notice us, it quickly rolled off the table and charged at us, a cloud of electricity forming around its body. Shouting, we jumped out of the way, but Jolteon rushed in and absorbed the Voltorb's charging attack. Then Jolteon howled and zapped Voltorb with a bolt of purple lightning. The head inside exploded into a spray of red and black, and the orb bounced back inside the room. It did not move again.

"Damn, good one, Jolteon…," Noanne whispered. "Anyway, should we check out the hallway now?" The rest of us nodded, and we proceeded into the hall. It turned left and then left again, taking us past the room behind the fireplace until we stepped through another doorway. Another set up steps brought us up to a wall we were able to push through like a revolving door. We weren't able to turn back, but it led us out to the next area, which looked like a battlefield. Blood painted the walls and floors, and dead bodies littered the ground. The room appeared to be a large banquet hall with maybe a hundred tables and even more chairs set up. Most of them had been destroyed or overturned. Playing cards and poker chips also covered the floor. "Okay, I'm buying the rotating room theory a little more now. So how do we get to the other rooms now?"

"Well, if the dining room rotated, that must mean…," I said and looked for an exit in the room. There was a doorway to our left, but it appeared blocked by a wall. "What the…?"

"Is this supposed to lead to something?" Hector asked.

"I thought this would lead back to the room Noanne was in with the piano. Although, if you ended up in the dark room with us, that must mean the dining room and piano lounge are connected. Probably all the room, actually. It would make sense that you couldn't get to whatever the hell this room is without passing through the maze."

"And if we came through the wall but can't go back…," Noanne started to say.

"Then there are ways to get here from the other rooms, too. It must be the failsafe in case the rooms rotate while people are in them, so they don't get trapped. Except that we can't go backwards, so it's square one for us anyway…"

"Maybe we can use this somewhere?" Hector said and gingerly held out the knife-crank. I asked him to turn up the end that had the socket. It was shaped like a hexagon.

"Oh, right! Look for something that this might be able to fit onto," I said, and we decided to split up. "Oh, wait, Hector, maybe you should take—"

"I'll be fine. If there's any trouble, I'll just yell for help," he said and smiled before turning to search the room. Something about his smile was off, but I couldn't place what. Deciding to ignore it, I set about looking along the walls for anything suspicious. After a short while, Noanne called out.

"I think I found something!" she shouted and waved to us from a corner of the room. She pointed out a gray square cut-out in the wall, with a hexagon protruding from a hole in the center. Hector was able to fit the crank onto the hexagon.

"Nice work, Noanne. How did you find it so quickly, though?" I asked.

"My sisters love escape rooms and dragged me with them every time they went. I've had a lot of practice. Anyway, it was covered up by a table, and then I was knocking on the wall to see if there were any hidden compartments. This was covered by a thin layer of glass and painted over to match the wall."

"The bigger question is: how do we turn it without cutting ourselves?" Hector asked.

"Is there a cloth or something in here we could use to cover up the sharp edges?" I asked and looked around. There was nothing but carnage. "Never mind."

"Uh, we could get one of our Pokémon to do it. But which one?" Noanne asked. I considered her team—Trevenant, Gothitelle, and Mimikyu. Mimikyu was right out, mostly because I thought it was gross and didn't want to look at it. Gothitelle was too fleshy; Trevenant seemed promising, but I was worried its bones claws would be damaged by the knife. For my team, Mr. Mime was out for sure—he would've been cut to ribbons. But its psychic powers could potentially work, making me reconsider Gothitelle, too.

"I'll see if Mr. Mime can turn it with Confusion. Come on out!" I shouted and summoned Mr. Mime. When it appeared in front of me, its crooked mouth appeared to be curled into a half-smile. Unsure of what that meant, I ignored it and commanded it to turn the handle with its mind. It turned to face the crank and raised its hands. Its fingertips were glowing a dim blue, as was the crank, and slowly, it began to turn. Something began to grate from the way we'd come, signaling that we'd been right.

"You help, too, Gothitelle. Help Mr. Mime turn the crank with Confusion!" Noanne announced and summoned Gothitelle. With both of them using their abilities to safely turn the crank, we eventually heard a loud click and commanded the Pokémon to stop.

"Should we go check?" I asked.

"Let me see. If it looks messy, we'll keep cranking," Noanne said and ran off before I could say anything else. She returned a minute later and motioned for us to try the next one. "It was a room with a swimming pool. One guess for what color the water was." Mr. Mime and Gothitelle turned the crank until we heard the click again. I nodded at Noanne, and she took off, later returning with a blank expression.

"Do we need to keep turning?" Hector asked. She cocked her head slightly to the side and pursed her lips.

"Umm, it looked like an empty room. I could be wrong, though. Didn't seem like anyone's been through it, either."

"Let's just all go check. There's nothing to lose," I said. Noanne and I called back our Pokémon, and then we all went to investigate the new room. Like Noanne said, it was a plain rectangular room that appeared to have nothing in it. Save for an area rug that matched the rugs in the other rooms of the haunted house and lights dotting the perimeter of the room, there didn't seem to be anything special worth examining. "What's your sense—think anything is hidden here?" Noanne shrugged.

"We could lift the rug." And so we did. The three of us rolled back the rug and pushed it off to the side. The floor beneath appeared to be the same tile in the dining room. I felt a little dizzy after trying to concentrate on its patterns, but nothing seemed out of place.

"Should we go back and keep turning?" I sighed. There was too much ground to cover. The possibility that we had missed something in the dining room also loomed in my mind, not to mention the room Noanne had walked through.

"…I guess. There could still be more rooms in the rotation," I said and started to turn back, but Noanne stopped me.

"I wanna try one thing, and then we can go. Mimikyu!" she shouted and threw out its Poké Ball. I groaned when the creature skittered over to us on its spider fingers. "What? You don't like it?" I vehemently shook my head and turned to look at the wall. "Well, I think it's cute… Anyway, Mimikyu, use Shadow Ball on all the lights!"

"Are you craz—" a flurry of dark orbs emitted from Mimikyu as it jumped around wildly, One-by-one, all the lights were destroyed by the attack until we stood in the near darkness of the room with only the light of the candle I'd given Noanne making our shadows dance. She called back Mimikyu and stared at Hector and me before blowing out the candle. That was when I noticed something light up on the ground. Some of the white tiles began glowing. I then realized they formed an arrow and were pointing to something by one of the walls. We followed the lights and saw that the arrow pointed to one of the black tiles.

"I'm gonna press it," Noanne said slowly, waiting for Hector and me to say something, it seemed. When neither of us protested, she jammed her finger down on the tile, causing it to depress, and something moved in the middle of the room. The tiles were small enough that someone walking around randomly would never have hit that button because their shoe wouldn't have been able to press down the button without getting blocked by the other tiles.

"That was…awesome," Hector murmured with a smile I could barely make out in the glow of the tiles. Noanne laughed. She was truly not to be underestimated.
"Can we get some light now?" she asked Jolteon. It ignored her until I told it to use Thunderbolt. Its body surged with electricity and then discharged out into the room. It illuminated the room long enough for us to see that a set of stairs had appeared in the center of the room, leading down into another area. Carefully, we walked down and felt our way through a short hallway by keeping our hands along the wall. Eventually, we arrived in a small chamber.

A weak light shone from above, like moonlight (although I figured it was fake), and illuminated a golden casket on a stone slab in the middle of the room. The walls were made of stone, and there didn't seem to be anything else in the room. When we got closer to the slab, the casket actually appeared to be a sarcophagus. The main body of it was gold, and there was blue striping around what appeared to be the head. A small round face was carved into the sarcophagus above a shadowy area that looked like it might be an opening into the interior. Then I realized the dark area was skin and noticed the lumps of two closed eyes.

"I don't like where this is going…," I mumbled and was prepared to order Jolteon to defend us. In my head, I imagined Cofagrigus springing to life and grabbing each of us with one of its arms, slowly strangling us to death.

"Hold on," Noanne sang quietly as she tiptoed closer to the slab. I was going to stop her but decided she was intuitive enough to know what she was doing. She carefully reached out to put a hand on the gold cover. Nothing happened. She ran her finger along the gold plating, admiring its beauty. Eventually, she made her way up to the head and stared into the face of the slumbering creature. Still no reaction. "If I were an evil genius playing a fucked up version of Pokémon with people in my creepy mansion, I'd hide something important in here," she whispered and pointed to Cofagrigus.

"How are we supposed to open it?" I felt my heart rate rising. Something was about to happen.

"We could just open it…, or you could catch it with that spare ball I gave you," Noanne said and winked.

"Oh. Right," I said, wanting to smack myself in the forehead for not thinking of it myself. I fished the ball from my bag and was about to throw it when I decided to hand it to Hector. "Actually, you should catch it. Since you lost your other ones." Hector seemed surprised but gratefully accepted the ball.

"Really? Okay," he said. He raised his arm and threw the ball. Suddenly, the sarcophagus opened with two panels on hinges flapping out. A dark arm shot out, caught the ball, and crushed it. The hand retreated inside and then re-emerged with three other arms, each wielding rusty knives. Noanne had jumped back and pressed herself against the wall. Thankfully, the arms weren't able to reach her because she was directly behind its head, but she wasn't able to move from that spot.

"Umm! Help, please!" Noanne shouted. Jolteon almost rushed to attack Cofagrigus, so I had to kneel down and hold it back. Then, peering inside its body, I saw it—a blue key hanging off of a rib of the skeleton inside Cofagrigus. While the arms were covered in skin, the rest of its body was not, and I could barely make out a black mass in its chest, pulsating like a cancerous tumor. "I was right, wasn't I?!" Noanne cried out, half laughing and crying, when I stood up again. I nodded.

"I was thinking we could just kill it, but then we might accidentally destroy the key. Do you have any ideas?" I yelled back over the whooshing of the swinging arms and blades. I then noticed the eyes set in the head of the sarcophagus were open and darting around the room frantically. The momentum of the swinging arms was causing Cofagrigus to slowly slide up the slab, bringing its reach closer to Noanne. She cried out when one of the knives almost cut her face.

"Do something!" she shouted and crouched down, avoiding another swipe. She cried crawling around to the side, but the slab was low enough that the arms were able to block her path.

"Can we put it back to sleep?" Hector shouted out.

"I'll try!" I shouted and took a couple steps back to call out Mr. Mime. "Use Hypnosis!" Mr. Mime held its hands up toward Cofagrigus until a series of light waves emitted from its fingertips. Gradually, the arms started moving slower and slower until they became motionless. Hector checked its eyes and said they'd closed. Noanne quickly scurried along the ground and rejoined us, but not before quickly reaching her hand in to snatch the key from inside the creature's body. We all heaved a collective sigh of relief, and I returned Mr. Mime to its ball.

"Let's get the hell outta here, please!" Noanne shouted, and we ran back up the stairs.

"I can't believe we actually found it!" I shouted and hugged Noanne and Hector. We did a strange little dance in our embrace before letting go. Noanne handed me the key for safe keeping.

"So the best way to get back to the gate is to just keep going, right? Or should we make our way back to the cart?" Noanne asked. I thought about the dark maze with Muk and shook my head.

"Let's just keep going. The way should be clear, thanks to those trainers," I said, and the others nodded. We proceeded through the gambling hall, through another hallway, into a greenhouse filled with heads in hanging pots, and then through another hall. Eventually, we ended up in a smaller version of the room that we'd initially entered when we first arrived in the area, signaling to me that we were at the end. We saw the double doors that had been locked on the other side. There was a dark line, like there was a groove, across the top of the doors that I didn't remember being visible on the other side but thought nothing of it.

"Yes! I think the mine cart track is in the next room. Homestretch, you all," I said, feeling hopeful that we would actually escape. There were several headless corpses in that room, as well, making me wonder what it was about the haunted house that loved beheading people so much.

"Race you to the end Hector!" Noanne shouted playfully and raced ahead, Hector close on her heels. Jolteon was growling at one of the bodies we passed, so I knelt down to reassure it that the body was no threat. Noanne cheered again when she reached the door and touched the handle. Then I heard something click. In the next moment, a high-pitched zinging noise flitted through the air, and all I heard was Noanne scream before I looked up and saw that Hector's head had been cut off. His body fell first to its knees, then toppled over on its side as his head bounced past Noanne and rolled away.

I stopped breathing. My mind became hazy, and it felt like the room was spinning. Jolteon was barking wildly at something, but it seemed so distant from me. Noanne was pointing at something above us. When I willed myself to look, I saw what looked like a thin wire bobbing up and down on the right side of the room, droplets of liquid falling from it onto the ground and splashing onto the wall. I figured they'd be red, but the droplets looked like water. I crawled over to look at the ground where the liquid had begun to pool a little, and it looked somewhat purple. Noanne then gasped, causing me to turn to Hector's body, which was melting into a purple puddle of ooze. The same thing was happening to Hector's head, and eventually, the slime soaked into the carpet, leaving behind only Hector's clothes.

A scream escaped my throat. I almost didn't recognize it was mine until Noanne grabbed my hand and said we had to go. We kept our heads low as we ran through the doors, Noanne pulling me along. Jolteon managed to squeeze past the doors before it shut again, and we were back in the room where we found the mine cart. Noanne wouldn't let us stop, and we kept running, back out into the hall where the holo projection jumped out at us again. We ran down the spiraling steps until we hit the bottom floor, which seemed like a faster trip because the stairs weren't working against us that time. We ran down the hall until we reached the room with the gate. Only then, did Noanne let us stop.

The pit in my stomach had evolved into a fully-fledged blackhole. It was despair, and I let it swallow me whole.