Hello reddit, I might have messed up here. I think I’m fucked, like actually dead. I need some advice, but first I’m going to have to give context to what’s going on.
My name’s Toby. I’m a highschool student in Smalltown USA and.. fuck. Okay the power just went out I need to speed things up. Me and two friends of mine, who I’ll call Reggie and Selena (not their real names) were bored one night during our spring break and thought it would be a great idea to go and explore an abandoned manor that everyone thinks is haunted and other cliché shit. We’ve heard of other kids going their and saying it was spooky and we wanted to try it for ourselves. I’m not really one who believes in the paranormal and neither is Reggie, but Selena was totally into it and kinda dragged us into going with her.
It was about a half hour walk out of town and we brought nothing but our phones and flashlights (even though we could’ve used our phones as flashlights, just felt more atmospheric). Once we got there it wasn’t nearly as big as we thought a manor would be, but it was still creepy as hell. Think horror movie haunted house, like that was what we were going into.
As we walked up to the house Reggie screamed and swear he saw something in a first floor window move, but I’m pretty sure he was trying to fuck with us. Like, why would you go into the house with us if you saw something in there already, y’know? Anyway, Selena opened the door and, well, it looked like a normal house on the inside. Like there was a large well furnished living room at the entrance and what looked like a normal kitchen farther into the house. It looked lived in, it just didn’t have electricity. What was really fucky was how loud the echo was. Like, you could say “Hello” and it felt like the house yelled it right back at you.
“Man, this place is sick as hell. as hell.” Reggie said and he plopped right down on a sofa nearby. “Can’t believe people said this was scary. was scary. What a total joke. joke.
I started to look around the place too. The place was like a normal house. Me and Reggie even started to talk about how we could make this place a secret hideout, but Selena stayed still at the door.
“What’s wrong pussy? pussy. I thought you loved spooky shit. shit. Why you standing there all terrified it just has a weird echo. a weird echoo.”
“Shh! Shut up for a second. A second. And be still, something’s off. -thing’s off.”
Selena took out her flashlight slowly and waited for Reggie to stay still. She then threw her flashlight to the ground with a loud thud onto the hardwood floor. She went wide eyed. “The flashlight didn’t make an echo. echo.”
I froze. I looked over at Reggie, but he didn’t seem to get it. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”
Selena immediately broke into a sprint out of the door, and I followed. I wasn’t about to find out why there was no echo when she threw her flashlight down. We were in a straight sprint back for town for about 10 minutes maybe before we realized Reggie didn’t follow us.
“Fuck, Selena where’s Reggie.”
“What do you mean, I thought he was with you! Dumbass.”
“Hey I was running for my life there I’m not trying to babysit that idiot too.” We were both fucking terrified. We thought Reggie was dead, but about a minute later Reggie was there walking towards us.
“What the fuck guys? You just up and leave me in the spooky echo house, and for what? Was this your way of pranking me or some shit?”
“No”, said Selena. “We honestly thought something was really messed up with that house and I’m not staying around to find out what it is.”
“Yeah, fucking same. That was creepy as shit man. At least we all are out of there though, yeah?”
“Uh, I guess? You guys are weird.”
I really didn’t care what Reggie called me, I was just glad we all made it out, but that was when I realized there was something up with Reggie. He.. I’m not sure how to explain it. He was like, too much like himself, y’know? Something about the way he talked and acted felt.. off. It was like an AI had learned how to mimic Reggie exactly and.. fuck. I don’t know man he was just so much himself that he wasn’t.
“Oh shit, I forgot my phone. I think I dropped it after you two ran off without me. Mind if we go back and get it? It’ll only take a few minutes I swear.”
“No way, get a new one. I’m not going back there.”
“Selena’s right, we should just go home. Maybe we can recover your phone tomorrow, it’s too dark.”
“Okay whatever, pussies.”
And that was that. Or so I thought. When I went over to Reggie’s to meet up so we could go get his phone his parents said he stayed the night with Selena. I called Selena and she said that when she went over earlier his parents said he was over at my place. I immediately wanted to call 911 for a missing person but Selena said we’d have to be a direct family member in order to call it, and when we told his parents Reggie wasn’t at either of our houses they didn’t seem to care.
This all happened a couple nights ago. Selena and I have been in contact at almost all times since then. Reggie’s still gone and spring break’s about to end. We’re hoping that he’ll just show up to school and we can act like nothing happened.
Problem is, I woke up like an hour ago and my bedroom has been echoey as hell. Every move I make is super loud and is echoed right back at me. And as I mentioned before the power has been out, for about 20 minutes now? As of writing this it’s 12:09 CST. I want your guys’ opinion. How fucked am I? What do I even do in a situation like this? I tried calling 911 and Selena and both led to voicemail. How do you get sent to voicemail for calling 911 anyway? This is so fucking crazy. Please help.