Giana leaped back with a scream. The cellar door stood open just enough to show the decapitated head, its jaws clamped around the edge of the door and its teeth imbedded in the wood. Noah knew the dead woman’s face—one of the other contestants. Noah struggled to remember her name but couldn’t. The woman had been quiet, polite. He wished he remembered more, but there was no chance to change that. At this point, the other contestant was literally just a head.
The body was nowhere in sight. Just a trail of blood leading down the stairs into the pure darkness below. Blood dripped from the torn neck, tap, tap, tapping on the wooden floor and slowly trickling down into the dark.
“Don’t go in the cellar,” Tremaine said, voice high pitched. His dark brown eyes were wild and wide, as if he were about to flip into a panic.
Not going into the cellar was the first rule they’d been given when they came to the old mansion. Noah had barely heard it over his excitement to be included in the game. Suddenly, the rules of the game took on a new light. Survive the house—that was the goal they’d been given.
The host had smiled a too-white grin and explained. Several cameras and studio lighting had focused on him as he spoke. Follow the rules, the reality show host had said, and you can survive. Noah recalled vividly smiling for the cameras and worrying about if he looked brave. He hadn’t wanted to make a fool of himself on national tv.
But the real goal, the real reason Noah had come to this old mansion, with its oak-paneled walls and antique furniture, and allowed himself to be locked in with the hidden cameras, wasn’t the fame. He needed money. Everyone on the show needed money. And if Noah survived, more money than Noah would make in ten years at his current job. Even more than that if he didn’t have to split the money with the other contestants. There had been five of them to split it, now it was down to four. He flushed at the thought.
A person was dead! It was no time to ponder how the prize money would be split.
Noah looked at the other three contestants. Giana seemed more ready for a photoshoot than dealing with life-or-death situations. Tremaine was a big guy, the sort of guy Noah would think would do well in this sort of situation, but he was clearly panicking, face gray and eyes unblinking wide. Ron stood shrewdly back—he was smaller than Noah or Tremaine, but his sharp expression seemed to imply he wasn’t overly phased by the dead body.
Giana gave a little hiccupping sob and turned away. Her glossy black hair fell briefly over her overly made-up face. “It looks like her body was, like, literally ripped off! How does that happen?”
Noah clenched his jaw. “They told us to never go in the cellar. I guess we just…” his voice drifted off. Money wouldn’t mean much if he didn’t last out the day.
“She’s dead!” Giana wailed. Her perfect red lips quivered, and her soft brown eyes sought out Noah’s.
“One less person to split the pot with,” Ron said.
“That’s sick!” Giana said, then looked to Noah.
Noah wrapped an arm around her shoulder and hugged her. “Just don’t look… as long as we follow the rules.”
“But…”
Noah shuddered. “I know… somehow… I didn’t think…” He hadn’t really thought people would die. Get eliminated, sure, but die? And like this? How did this even happen? What could rip a person’s head off like that?
“Don’t ever go in the cellar and no tapping out,” Tremaine said. He sounded a little calmer. “No backing out.”
“Someone needs to go down there,” Giana said. “I mean… find her, see what happened.”
Tremaine shook his head.
“Please!” Giana said. “We have to know what happened, right?” She looked between the rest of them imploringly.
“You go, then,” Ron said.
“Noah?” Giana turned to him. “What if there’s something down there? This can’t be part of the game!”
Noah squared his shoulders. There was nothing to be done now except exactly what they’d been asked to do in the first place: Follow the rules. “I don’t think it’s smart to go down. If we are in danger, then the danger is down there.”
Giana’s shoulders slumped, but finally she nodded.
A radio in the corner of the room came on, crackling slightly with static though no noise came out. Noah spun to face it, tucked in a corner between a bookshelf filled with dusty books and an antique wooden table. A low whine started and then paper slowly emerged, not on a single sheet like most printers he’d seen but on one long continuous page like one of the old dot matrix printers. Even from across the room, Noah could see neatly printed words, but reading them would take getting closer.
Ron was the first to move, barreling across the room and then staring down.
“What does it say?” Giana squealed.
Ron stared down, brow furrowing. “What the heck does that mean?”
Noah headed over. On the paper was printed a simple message in all caps, over and over again, the same message. STAY IN THE RED ROOM UNTIL IT’S SAFE TO GET OUT.
“Seems simple enough,” said Tremaine from behind Noah. “We stay in the red room.”
“What red room?” Ron asked. “Have you seen a red room? Cause I haven’t.”
Giana gave a little sob.
“Then we look. Come on,” Noah said. He stepped toward the door, back into the main hallway.
“We should split up,” Ron said. “We’ll find it faster.”
“One team upstairs and one on this floor?” Tremaine asked.
Noah nodded. “No one should go alone.”
Giana fidgeted, her gaze returning to the bloody trail down the stairs. “As long as we get to leave this room!”
“I’m not going with her. She’s useless,” Ron said, glaring at Giana.
“I will,” Noah said, giving Giana a small smile. Then his eyes flicked to a camera in the corner. Were people really watching this? If they were, was help coming? But he couldn’t get sidetracked. Given the body lost somewhere in the cellar, it was evident that not following instructions would have consequences. “We’ll take the upstairs.”
“Should we close the door or something?” Giana said, still staring at the head. “I don’t know. This feels disrespectful or something.”
Noah reached out to squeeze her hand. “Right now, we worry about finding the red room. I’m sure she’d understand.”
Ron rolled his eyes. “You guys keep dawdling; we’re off to look.”
“We’ll shout if we find it,” Tremaine said.
Then the two of them were out the door and Noah gave Giana’s hand one more squeeze before dropping it. “C’mon. I saw the stairs earlier. Follow me.”
They passed several “hidden” cameras in the hall, little red lights implanted in the wood-paneled walls giving away the surveillance’s location. He’d plotted most of them on the walk inside earlier. Giana followed his gaze.
“Do you think they are on a live feed? I mean… someone must be coming, right?”
Noah didn’t want to think about it. Until either they got out of the house or people arrived to get them out, the only thing that mattered was the rules. “I think that we need to find the red room and get everyone in it. Fast.”
They hurried over to the stairs. Giana gripped the antique wooden banister and started up, her red heels clicking against the wood until they met the carpet runner and their sharp clicks dulled to light thumps. Noah followed up after her.
The hallway at the top of the stair was long and straight, almost impossibly so. The house had been huge from the outside, but he could see seven doors before the hallway faded into blackness and he had a feeling there were more beyond that.
They needed to divide and conquer. He cleared his throat. “You open the doors on the left. I’ll take the right. We’re looking for red.”
Giana gripped the first door handle, and he moved past her to open his first door. Inside was a wood wall room just like the others he’d seen. A red brocade couch was the only evidence of the proper color. He paused. Could that be enough? He hadn’t seen any other red.
No. He shut the door and moved on.
Giana hurried along on the other side. Despite her panic earlier, she was moving efficiently now.
The second room had no evidence of red. Neither did the third. Noah began to doubt his decision about the red couch.
Giana let out a little cry, and he spun around. Beyond her was a room, completely empty of furniture or décor. But the walls were red, the floor was red, and the ceiling was red.
“This has to be it,” Noah said. He turned back to face the stairs and yelled, “Tremaine! Ron! We found it.”
“Let’s get inside,” Giana said.
“We have to get the others.” He continued to look at the stairs but heard no response.
Giana snorted. “They said they’d yell for us. I’m not doing more for them.”
Noah hesitated, then yelled again. “Hey! Get your butts up here.”
“Red room up here!” Giana yelled.
Still nothing from downstairs.
“I’m going to the top of the stairs. I don’t think they can hear me.”
“I’m going inside,” Giana said, folding her arms and taking a backward step into the red room.
Noah took a step in the other direction. He couldn’t just leave the others downstairs, not after seeing that grisly sight on the cellar stairs. The camera lights glowed at him, watching his every move. The lights flickered, and he paused. Something was wrong with the walls.
Giana shrieked, pointing.
The brown wood was fading, almost as if it was turning into gray-scale like an old movie. All the color leached out of the hallway and this fading effect moved toward them.
Noah pushed past Giana into the red room and slammed the door. He swore softly under his breath. That wasn’t possible. None of this was possible.
Giana stared at the red paint on the door and stepped further into the red room.
“We’re safe here, though, right?”
Noah didn’t answer. He didn’t feel safe.
“What do you think is happening out there?” Giana asked.
He didn’t answer and Giana went quiet. He sat down with his back against the door and Giana paced the room. After an indeterminate amount of time, the walls seemed to fade to a lighter red, closer to a traffic light yellow.
“Do you see that?” he asked. “The walls are changing.”
“What do you think that means?” She asked. “We were supposed to stay here until it was safe… does that mean it’s safe?”
“Or that this isn’t the red room anymore…” Damnit, following the rules was supposed to be the base point, but how was he to know when it was safe, or if the “red room” was always the same place?
“Hey… is it getting hard to breathe?” Giana asked, eyes wide.
Noah stood slowly. His lungs did feel stressed, burning. The walls were still slowly shifting. Maybe they’d turn green? Maybe this was like a traffic light thing. Red meant to stop here and green meant to go. “Wait for green?”
She gasped, holding her chest, and nodded.
But after a few minutes, the burn in his chest was unmistakable. No matter how he gulped at the air, he wasn’t getting anything. Black dots swum in front of his eyes.
Giana stumbled to her knees.
No more waiting. He opened the door and a rush of air came in.
For a split second he held his breath, afraid of what might be in the air, but his body refused him, and he took a deep gulp. Once he caught his breath, he took a look into the hall. All the colors had returned. The warm brown wood of the walls and the faded blues of the carpet looked truly beautiful. He stumbled out into the hallway and heard Giana’s heels clumping after him.
“We need to look for the others,” she said, a bit of guilt in her voice.
“Downstairs,” Noah said.
They hurried along the hallway and back down the stairs. The lights of the cameras still flickered from the walls like hungry eyes watching. Just in front of the door leading to the room they’d started in Noah noticed a new photo hanging on the wall.
His stomach sank. He recognized the type of photo as one that had been relatively common in the Victorian era, people positioned stiffly around a room looking more like dolls than people—death photographs. Where corpses were posed like they were alive to give their relatives a last memory.
Only the people in this photo weren’t from the Victorian era, though the picture was in black and white and styled as an antique. The people in the photo were Tremaine and Ron.
Giana looked at it over his shoulder. “They’re okay, right?”
Noah didn’t answer and, in the silence, he heard the staticky noise from the radio. He rushed back into the room, avoiding looking at the cellar door and the decapitated head there. Instead, he hurried over to see the new instruction.
This time, the continuous sheet only had one line. YELLOW: attention to bad weather conditions.
“What does that mean?” Giana said from over his shoulder. “Why can’t they just give simple instructions? What does that mean, Noah?”
Noah bit his lip. He didn’t know, and he wasn’t about to join the other three contestants in death. There were only the two of them left now. He looked desperately around the room. There had to be an answer.
Giana leaned out into the hall, then back inside to face Noah. “Are we looking for something yellow?”
Maybe. Then he saw it, on the wall behind Giana. A bright yellow umbrella. It fit. Yellow and umbrellas were all about the weather.
“Do you think we need to go outside?” Giana asked, taking one step out the door.
Noah lunged for the umbrella. Grabbed it off the wall. And opened it up.
Immediately, water began to pour from the ceiling in heavy sheets.
Giana screamed, and Noah looked over at her. Her flesh was melting off her face, her clothes sloughed from her body as the muscle mass underneath melted into lumps of reddish flesh.
Noah huddled under the umbrella, carefully pulling his feet back as the water rushed around him, rushed past him and splashed down the cellar steps. Giana’s scream ended.
When Noah looked again, her bones melted away and only her eyes remained, floating for a moment on the torrent of water and then washing through the cellar door and down the steps. The pupils stared out at him as they disappeared into the dark.
Remaining still, Noah stood and watched as the water all drained away. He didn’t move until the last splash fell onto the cellar stairs. The skull was gone, probably melted away.
Noah closed the cellar door.
Radio static alerted him to a new message. Stomach in a knot, Noah walked over. This was the moment of truth. If there was another rule on the page, then he might never make it out of here, but if the page said what he thought it would…
Noah leaned over.
And across the paper was an announcement that he had won the cash prize. It congratulated him in a long, effusive message that Noah didn’t bother reading. There was only one thing he cared about.
Noah pulled out his phone.
With a swipe of his finger, he unlocked it and opened his banking app. And there, just as promised, was an account balance the like of which he’d never seen. The whole prize was his! Noah let out a little cheer.
This was better than anything he could have hoped for. Without pausing, Noah stepped over the pile of Giana’s clothes out the door and started a group text to his friends. This round of drinks would be on him!