Page 6 of Magpie
“Screw this. I’m waiting in the car,” I say to myself. I march through the foyer, heading back to the door. Grabbing the doorknob, I twist and yank it open. Or, at least, I try to. The door must be jammed. Giving it a harder tug, sure I can get it this time, I let out a stifled cry of annoyance when it doesn’t so much as budge. Grunting with the effort, I finally let the door go, my mood souring.
“That’s not the way out,” a voice whispers directly behind me.
I gasp, spinning around and pinning myself against the door. I expected to be greeted by some actor dressed in a ghostly costume and holding a bloody knife, but once again I am looking at an empty living room.
“Nice sound effects,” I call out into the void, trying to force bravado into my voice as I peel myself away from the door. My only option is to move deeper into the House. Maybe I can find a back door, or an entrance to the area the actors use. Surely someone will help me find a way out of this.
There is a short hallway that ends in curling wooden stairs, not allowing me to see up to the next level. Gleaming above the stairs, glowing in the shadows, written in a spindly script, are the words:
Go Up To Get Out.
“Of course,” I grumble, gripping the railing and taking the stairs two at a time. I wait for a panel on the wall to open up and hands to pop out at me, or for one of the picture frames to suddenly come alive with the image of a screaming woman. But again, I am rewarded with a mundane stairway. “This is supposed to be scary?” I shout into the emptiness. It does not answer, but I get the sudden feeling that I’m being watched.
I push that thought aside, but I climb the stairs quicker, my heart rate spiking. When I crest the top of the landing, I come to a staggering halt.
A scream rips through the quiet of the House, deafening in the still silence.
I gasp. That’s Jessica screaming. It doesn’t sound like a giddy scream, the half-frightened ones she belts out during horror films. No, this sounds like real terror.
Without missing a beat, I sprint toward the sound. It’s coming from a room at the end of the hallway. Running to the end, I grab the doorknob and burst into the room. “Jessica,” I yell, coming to a halt in the middle of an empty nursery.
I only know it to be a nursery because of the single piece of furniture nestled in the far corner: a lacy, veil-covered bassinet. The screaming is coming from it. I shiver again and find my feet refusing to respond to me. The horrifying noise continues, each cry louder and longer than the last. The sound is going to drive me crazy; I need to find a way to stop it.
I creep forward, reminding myself that this is all some elaborate audio trick. The bassinet is far too small to fit Jessica. This is all just an act.
The screams have taken on a more insane edge, the sound grating. Fueled by irritation and fear, I march across the room, yanking the silk curtains aside and looking down at the bassinet. A baby doll with glowing red eyes is looking up at me, its porcelain mouth open, letting out the screams that somehow sound exactly like my friend’s.
I grab the doll and yank it up. Turning it over, I pull the lace dress down, trying to find where the batteries go, or some cord I can rip out of it. Anything to make it stop.
“Leave my dolly alone,” a voice hisses behind me.
I’m surprised I even hear it over the wailing screams coming from the demonic baby doll. Jumping, I spin around. A girl in ripped jeans and a frilly pink shirt stands in the doorway.
“I’m just trying to get it to stop screaming,” I say, holding the doll out awkwardly toward this strange girl. Is she a patron or an actor?
“I said,” she growls, her voice losing the light and breezy tone of a child, morphing into the guttural growls of a cornered beast, “leave my dolly alone!” She screams the last words, her voice filling every corner of the room.
I drop the doll, slapping my hands over my ears, trying to block out the sound. It isn’t the kind of noise that can be shut out; it’s almost as though it’s coming from inside my mind. The girl rushes to me, and with each step she grows impossibly bigger, her monstrous form looming in front of me.
Cowering against the bassinet, my eyes closed tight, I wait for the attack. None comes. After a moment, I open my eyes, slowly removing my hands from my ears.
The girl and the doll are gone, and the room is quiet once more.
Slowly standing from my crouched position, I lean against the bassinet for support, my legs unsteady beneath me. My mind is racing, desperately trying to make sense of the scene that just played out. An audio trick, an optical illusion—it has to have been something like that. Yet I can’t shake howrealit felt.
“Maggie,” Tim yells.
I bolt from the creepy nursery, rushing into the hallway before coming to a sliding stop. If they copied Jessica’s voice, what’s stopping them from copying Tim’s?
Tentatively walking forward, I listen as Tim continues to shout for me. His voice is coming from downstairs, back in the living room.
“Maggie, where are you?” he calls.
The stairs curve and twist before me, one path leading back to the living room and to whoever is pretending to be Tim, begging for me to come back to them. The other path leads up to yet another floor, to more swirling darkness.
Looking down the stairs, listening as Tim’s voice calls for me, I turn my back on the sound and walk up the stairs.
Go Up To Get Out.
