Page 49 of No Escape

“Well, that’s good enough for me.” Mia sat on the slide. “In a while, juvenile,” she called out as she disappeared.

Winston and Clarissa rolled their eyes at each other, and I made a note to have my Mia conversation with Lexi as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Alessa stepped up to the slide. “My turn, I guess.”

She slid down, leaving me, my in-laws, and the gamemaster in the room.

“Ladies first,” Winston said to his wife, sweeping out his arm toward the slide. “Come on, Clarissa, you can do this. We’re not going to fail because of a pair of white pants.”

“Fine, butyougo first,” Clarissa said. “I want you down there to cushion my fall if it becomes necessary.”

“Have it your way.” Winston sat down and pushed off. When he called back up to her, Clarissa followed until it was just me and the gamemaster alone in the room, sizing each other up.

“I’ll start the clock in fifteen seconds,” Brando said as I stepped onto the slide. “Good luck. I believe you’ll find this puzzle quite challenging.”

I pushed off, going down the slide at a good clip. Before I hit the bottom, I heard the door above me close. I braced myself so I landed smoothly when my feet hit the floor, then automatically swept the room with my eyes.

The exit door was on the far side of the room with a large digital clock showing a time of 1:59:56 and counting down. The walls were made of stone and were likely a part of the original castle. There were no windows or other obvious means of exit. Strange carnival-style music played through hidden speakers.

The ceiling was high and, oddly, covered with balloons, which were divided by colors and marked into sections by lines of white balloons. I counted quickly, noting there were eight different areas and nine colors of balloons including the white ones. Each balloon area was numbered by a small sign hanging from the ceiling in the middle. Along the left half of the room the balloons were numbered one to four, starting with the one at the far end. For the right half of the room, the balloon numbers ran from five, which was closest to the slide, to the number eight at the far end of the room.

The lighting was dim, but I made out two square game tables set up along the right stone wall. The one closest to me had a chessboard with what looked like a game in progress, a chess timer, a small pad of paper, and two chairs. Farther down the wall, another game table with four chairs had been set up, but I couldn’t yet see what game it held.

Across the room from those tables stood an unusual, rectangular table. Two sculpted figures posed like Atlas supported the thick marble top on their backs. From my angle, it looked like large jigsaw puzzle pieces were scattered atop it. Farther along the wall stood a large scale with a circular dial that you might see at a carnival, the kind that would presumably show your weight if you stood on it. Behind that, there appeared to be an ATM.

What the hell?

“What do we do?” Alessa asked me.

The sheer chaos of the layout had to be part of the puzzle, so I considered the best strategy to start. “Let’s explore the room for a few minutes. Note any items that strike you as potentially important. Avoid moving anything until we know what and where everything is. Let’s take inventory before we decide on a strategy.”

The team started to wander around. I headed toward the center of the room, where a pedestal with a rectangular top had been positioned. A dark wooden box, the size of a small microwave and ornately engraved with Roman-style vines and leaves, had been placed atop the pedestal. The box had a hunting bow with a notched arrow carved into the top. A combination lock, the kind you might find on a briefcase or a bike, was embedded into the side of the box. The lock had an eight-digit code.

I left the pedestal without touching the box and strode over to the table with the game I hadn’t been able to see upon my arrival. The table was hexagonal in shape and covered with a board game, small tiles, and a tile holder that looked like the one from a Scrabble game. I’d only played the game a few times, but I knew Lexi’s parents were enthusiasts.

The game seemed to be nearly finished, as it was covered with tiles and words already in play on the board. In fact, there appeared to be only one player left with any tiles to play. A pen and a small piece of paper with the handwritten words48 pointssat at the lower right of the board.

I moved on, continuing to take inventory. A wall-size, garish carnival panel hung at the far end of the room, opposite the slide and adjacent to the exit door. Decorated with clowns, the panel had eight doll-size doors arranged in two rows of four. Six black gaming chairs were fixed to the floor and arranged in an arc in front of the panel. Plastic guns were attached by a cable and rested in a holster to the side of each chair. The carnival music came from camouflaged speakers I was now able to detect near the panel.

I startled when Gio’s hand landed on my shoulder. “What is this—a circus?” he asked me in Italian.

“It’s definitely starting to feel that way with the clowns, a scale, an ATM, and balloons,” I replied.

“So, where do we start?”

I turned around to survey the room in its entirety. I honestly had no idea, but we needed to get going. “Okay, team, we’ve seen what’s here. A wide variety of games, some traditional, some not. There’s almost a circus feel to things. But it’s time to get started. I suggest taking a quick look at the box in the middle of the room on that pedestal together, and then we’ll decide how to proceed from there.”

Everyone nodded in agreement, so we headed to the pedestal and examined the large carved wooden box in unison.

“It’s got an arrow carved into it,” Clarissa noted. “And a bow. Perhaps that’s significant, although I don’t see any archery targets in here. Yet.”

I carefully examined the box mechanism. It had a hinged lid held shut by a latch and, of course, the combination lock.

Alessa peered over my shoulder. “The lock has numbers, letters, and symbols, depending on which digit you spin. The first two-digit columns have letters, the third one has numbers, the fourth one has symbols, and the last four have all letters. Weird.”

I gently turned the first digit of the lock with letters on it. The letters were not sequential and contained only five letters: B, K, N, Q, and R. The second column had the letters A through H in sequential order. The third digit had numbers sequentially listed one through eight, and the fourth had: +, #, !, ?, and 0-0. A quick examination of the final four-digit columns indicated they were duplicates of the first four.

I pushed and pulled on the carvings and corners, hoping to find another way to open the lid. I half hoped I’d get lucky and find a hidden panel or drawer but found nothing. I also tried to lift the lid from the hinge side without success. I tried a few random combinations, but nothing happened.

“Slash, check this out,” Clarissa called. She stood on the scale and held a piece of paper between her fingers. “You’d think that if they’d spent money to put a scale like this on an island, it would at least work.”

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