*I thought I told you that you shouldn't read this. Oh, well. Suit yourself, reader.
I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. We had just finished watching The Phantom of the Opera in the den, and were asleep in the living room. The digital clock on the wall read three fifteen. In the morning, of course.
I sat up straight, only to find Cadence, Marisa, and Madeline also awake.
"Did you hear that?" Madeline asked, her voice sounding a bit worried.
"Hear what?" I asked in return.
"We heard a squeaking noise, then footsteps. We went to check it out, but there was no one there," Marisa said.
"That's strange," I said.
I froze in place. "Listen," I whispered.
The room fell into an eerie silence. Then, out of nowhere, a door, wooden, I guessed, by the sound, creaked open, and there were footsteps as it closed.
"There it is again!" Marisa whispered urgently.
I motioned for her to be quiet. Silently, I stood up, rounded the corner leading to the hallway containing the bedrooms, and stopped.
The creak had to have come from a wooden door, an old one. All our doors were new. Another thing I noticed- the footsteps were not of bare feet, but of someone wearing shoes. Not a women's high heels, but like a man's dress shoes.
"That's odd," I whispered as I sat back down on my air mattress.
"Did you find anything?" Cadence asked.
"No," I said. I glanced up at the clock, my eyes going wide.
The clock's numbers were moving frantically, switching from number to number before cracking in half and fell to the floor with a loud clatter.
"Okay," I announced. "Now I'm scared."
But that wasn't the worst. Where the clock had been, a window appeared.
"What the…" Madeline trailed off, not knowing what to think.
"Should we check it out?" I asked.
"Well," Cadence said. "I'm fully convinced this is a dream, so why not?"
The four of us stood up, being careful not to wake up Alexis and Kelly. Marisa slid the window open, which squeaked and shuttered before popping off the window.
"Wonderful," I said as I sat on the windowsill. "I'm going in."
"Are you crazy?" Cadence asked, trying to pull me off. "If you're going, so am I."
"And I," Marisa agreed.
"Me, too!" Madeline added quickly.
"Fine," I said. I turned around on the windowsill, sliding through.
I landed on a stone floor. The air was damp and musty, not to mention cold. The smell of lake water drifted from the left side of the hallway I stood in. As I entered, both sides of the hall were lit up by hundreds of candelabras flaming to life.
One by one, the others slid in as well. It took us a while to regain our logic and train of thought.
"You don't think…?" Marisa let her question hang in the air.
"That this has something to do with wishing to come here at eleven eleven?" Cadence finished. "I didn't think anything would happen, but now…" She gestured to the hallway around us. "Now I think differently."
"If anything," I said, "we need to get out of here. You recognize this place?"
"Oh my gosh!" Madeline exclaimed. "This is the hallway The Phantom led Christine down in the movie!"
"And I don't think we're going to be greeted very happily by him," I said. "So I suggest we leave. Find Christine or somebody." I paused, thinking. "I wouldn't be surprised if he could hear us now. Secret passageways, being able to seem nearly invisible in broad daylight, you know?"
The others agreed immediately, walking down the right side of the hall to what appeared to be someone's mirror.
I spared a glance behind me. For a moment, I considered entering the Phantom's lair. Luckily, I wasn't that stupid. So I didn't.
In that glance behind, I saw the candelabras light die out in a ferocious gust of wind. Turning around quickly, I could've sworn I heard a man's dark laugh.