Escape the Night: Betrayal at the House on the Hill

A/N: Hello, world and welcome back to the final episode of Escape the Night Season 1!

I did go to the dentist yesterday and got one root canal done, and that's the good news. The bad news is that I'll have to go back next week for a second root canal, and I'm not looking forward to it. Anyway, time to see if our surviving YouTubers can escape from Arthur, Sarah, and Marvin. On with the story!

Read, review, and enjoy!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Escape the Night. I just own any and all characters that I just happen create.

CHAPTER ONE: TIME TO ESCAPE

Joey wasn't sure of how long he was unconscious, but when he finally woke up, his head was pounding from the chloroform, his neck was sore, and he was chained to an x-shaped pole for some reason. Lifting his head and shifting a bit so that he was upright, he looked around and when he saw Dawn, Oli, and Eva were also chained up in what was clearly a dungeon with a bald man chained to a wall just behind Oli, it all came rushing back to him, the whole damn night.

"Guys!"

Dawn woke with a start and groaned, rubbing first her aching head and then her sore neck, pushing herself so that she was sitting straight, and she became alarmed at their current location. "You've gotta be kidding me! Joey?"

"I know," Joey said as Eva woke up next with the same pounding head and sore neck. "Egh, why do I have a headache?"

"My head hurts, too," Eva agreed, "and so does my neck."

Oli woke up just then with a gasp, startling them, and before they could warn him, he saw the bald man, who was making a warbling noise, behind him, and he began to panic. "Omigod! Omigod!" And his panic didn't lessen when the mad man began laughing manically. "We're…we're chained…"

"We know, Oli," Dawn said and noted that their friend was also suffering from both a headache and a sore neck. "I think Arthur used chloroform on us earlier, which is why we all have headaches."

"Doesn't explain why our necks are sore," Eva pointed out.

"Guys, we're still chained up," Oli pointed out and cringed when the mad man cackled again.

Joey looked around, looking for something and saw the box that was next to him. "Look! I have a box!"

"All dressed up and nowhere to go!" the lunatic sneered, swaying side-to-side.

"Oh, shut up, Gollum," Dawn grumbled as she, Oli, and Eva found that they had boxes, too. "Now, how do we open these things?"

Eva looked around and spotted a long, skinny object that wasn't far from Joey's right hand. "Joey, what is that? What is that next to you? It's like…it's like a poker…"

"Welcome to my house!" the mad man crowed, dancing side-to-side.

"Joey, get it," Oli begged, tears in his eyes. "Open the box."

Ignoring the mad man and heeding his friend's request, Joey reached for the poker and, after a few attempts, managed to snag it and dragged it over to him. He picked it up, seeing that one end was shaped like a 'V', and he tried to insert it into the similarly shaped hole in his box, but it wouldn't fit. "It doesn't fit."

"Welcome!" the lunatic shrieked.

"Give it to me, Joey," Dawn requested, wishing that the lunatic would just shut up, and when Joey managed to slid the poker to her, she grabbed it. "Come on," she muttered, trying to insert it into her own box, but it wouldn't fit. "Dammit!"

"Give it to Oli then," Eva suggested, hoping that it would fit at least one of the boxes.

Dawn nodded and did her best to toss the poker to Oli, but it wasn't easy with the chains, and it just barely fell short of him. "Sorry!"

Oli grunted as he tried to reach it with his boot, and he managed to drag it closer so that he was able to grab it. Straightening up and telling the ranting lunatic to shut up, he tried to open his box, but it wouldn't go in. "No, no! It isn't working!"

"Toss it to me, Oli!" Eva called out, and he did so. She managed to catch it and when she tried the poker on her own box, it opened on the first try. "Guys, mine worked!" she exclaimed, relieved. "Mine worked!" She took out a key, which she used on one of the cuffs, freeing her wrist, and she found a poker nearby. Reaching for it, she grabbed it and tossed it to Joey, who caught it. "Use it. See if it works." And she went to work on freeing her other wrist with the key.

Joey inserted the poker into his box and this time it opened. Pulling out the key, he unlocked his wrists while Eva went to help Dawn, having found another poker that the brunette couldn't reach, and then she went to help Oli, who was on the verge of a full-blown panic attack, and it didn't help that the lunatic was still ranting and raving at them with an insane smile on his face.

Once Joey and Dawn were freed, they hurried over to Oli, who was using the poker that Eva had found, and he managed to unlock his box, discovering that the key only unlocked one of the chains. "Guys, it doesn't work!" he yelped, beginning to hyperventilate, and his entire body was shaking. "It doesn't work! Don't leave me! Please don't leave me…"

"We're not going to leave you, Oli," Dawn promised, hoping to calm him down until they could get him free.

Joey looked around the dungeon and saw that there was one last box, and it was next to the cackling lunatic. 'It would be next to Gollum,' he thought sourly. "There's a box there, too! And a keyring!" he added, spotting the ring of keys that was hanging on a hook on the wall that was directly behind the lunatic.

"Get the key!" Oli pleaded. "Get me out!"

"Joey, just grab the key from him!" Eva shouted.

Dawn moved to Joey's side, eying the situation. "Ok, I'll distract Gollum here," she said, hoping that she wouldn't regret her plan, "and you get both the box and the keys."

Joey nodded and while Dawn made faces at the lunatic, who tried to lunge at her despite the chains, he managed to kick the box to a safe distance and he grabbed the keyring off the wall. "Got it!" He and Dawn went back to Oli, and they managed to free him with the first key on the ring.

"Yes!" Oli cheered, relieved to be free and he let his friends help him up. "Yes!"

"No!" the lunatic snarled. "No!"

Joey ignored him and turned his attention to the final box. "Wait. What is this?" He crouched down with Eva and Dawn, and he opened the box, finding a pocket watch and a note. He picked up the pocket watch to check the time while Eva read the note.

"'Dear, Joey, Dawn, Oli, and Eva. I'm glad that you four were able to last this long. As a reward for your tenacity, you get to keep your lives, as long as you stay down here in my – shall we say – guest room'," she read, feeling uneasy. "'No need to worry. I've injected you all with a special serum that I created myself. By the time the sun rises at 6:00 am, you will be as complacent as well-trained animals and ready to join the house staff'." She stared at her friends in horror. "This is from the butler!"

Dawn touched the spot on her own neck, wincing a little since it was still sore. "No wonder we have sore necks," she realized. "That jerk drugged us twice!"

Joey was feeling sick, for he knew that he would rather die then be the slave to the likes of Arthur, and there was no way he was going to let that happen to his friends either. "Guys," he said, looking at the pocket watch and saw the time, "it's 5:30 am. We've only got a half hour before sunrise."

"Omigod," Oli moaned.

"We better not waste the time we have left," Dawn stated grimly.

Joey nodded and straightened up, hoping that the remaining key on the keyring would help get them out of there. "You're right, Donny," he agreed. "We've got a half hour. Let's go."

"Stay!" the lunatic hissed as they hurried to the door. "Go," he mumbled as they got the door open and exited the dungeon.

Going up a flight of stairs and opening another door, they soon found themselves in a bedroom, and there were files scattered on a desk and on the nearby bed. Finding flashlights, they began searching the room for clues or anything that could help get them out of that place.

"Whose bedroom is this?" Eva wondered, looking around.

"Arthur's," Dawn answered. "His quarters are in the back of the house." She opened one of the files on the bed and sighed when she saw the contents. "There are times when I hate being right."

"What is it?" Joey asked as he, Oli, and Eva joined her, and he saw that inside the file was a photo of himself, which was of him shortly after he had had his hair cut from his old emo haircut to the spiky haircut that he preferred when it wasn't smoothed down, his fingerprints, and information about himself. "That's me. Why does Arthur have a file on me?"

Dawn opened the other files, revealing information about herself, Oli, Eva, and their dead friends. "He has files on all of us," she explained. "I always thought it was odd that Arthur would come to you about this place, Joey, and while he knew about me being an actress, I wondered how he knew about my dislike for tuna since that isn't common knowledge."

"But your character on Doctor Who doesn't like tuna," Oli pointed out.

"The difference is that character is allergic to tuna while I don't like eating it," Dawn corrected him. "Had way too many tuna casseroles when I was a kid, and I can barely stand the taste, much less the smell."

Eva flipped through her file. "Well, he certainly did his research," she commented, looking around again. "All this place needs is a cork-board, our photos, and some red…wait." She grabbed something from the wall. "Guys. I found a key."

"Wait what?" Joey asked, shutting the file he'd been looking at about Shane, which did contain information about him being a member of the Society Against Evil. "You found a key?"

Eva nodded, showing it to them. "Yeah. On top of here."

"Wait," Oli said, having moved to the desk, where there was an open file. "I found something. This is it. Look." And they quickly joined him as he read the note attached to the file. "'Brother, you have humiliated me, betrayed me, enchained me in a dark corner of your new estate. You brought me here to help you clean things up, but really, you needed to stab me in the back to show the wicked presence your loyalty. Someday, the key to my cell will be found, and when that day comes, I will repay this betrayal with blood. I know you've hidden it behind a trail of gems, the first of which lurks beneath the surface of a reflecting pool'."

"That's it," Eva breathed. "According to this, Arthur has a brother, who he betrayed and is locked up somewhere in the house."

"Probably did it to convince the evil that he wanted to serve it," Dawn guessed. "And did by pulling a Cain and Able on his own brother. That's just wrong."

Oli reread the note again. "'Beneath the surface of a reflecting pool'," he repeated. "Better take this with us." And he pocketed the note.

"We have to go to the pool," Eva said, feeling hopeful again.

Joey nodded. "Ok," he said, looking around the bedroom. "How do we get out of here?"

"This key has to belong to something," Eva said, holding up the key again.

Joey aimed his flashlight around the room until he found the door. "This door," he said, going to it. "Right here." He took the key and tried it, grinning when the door opened. "Let's go." And they hurried out of the room with Eva remarking that she broke a nail, which got some chuckles from her friends.

A/N: Well, they got out of the dungeon, but can they find Arthur's brother? Well, you'll just have to find out tomorrow if they can. Bye for now! R&R everyone!