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.