Escape - Golden Music Part 2

Thump

A sharp pain woke me up, throbbing through my skull.

I looked around at the room: brown, rusty walls surrounded me, with ancient paintings plastered throughout. There were glass cases around and in the middle of the room with little things in them like an exhibit. Bronze statues of gods were holding a crook and flail, with their arms crossed over them.

A museum?

It looked just like an Egyptian museum.

Bzz

An intercom turned on.

You have been imprisoned in this museum. Getting out will prove if you are clever enough to serve the King. Objects are scattered around the room to help you escape.

You have 2 hours. If you don’t escape, I guess you’ll be fed to the crocodiles.

Bzz

I was confused.

First of all, the voice was scratchy as if they went screaming around Times Square and came back in time just to talk in an intercom.

Second, I was in New York.

New York didn’t have a King.

Not many places in the world currently had a king.

Was I in New York?

I had no idea.

I got up, brushed some dust off my pants, and looked around.

At the top of the ceiling, there was a logo that said Clue Chase.

Clue Chase was an escape room company in New York.

At least that means I’m still in New York.

I knew that the timer was ticking, but I wasn’t moving because I was panicking.

I quivered at the thought of enclosed spaces.

That's claustrophobia, for you scientists.

It’s not a super rare fear, but I had an extreme case of enclosed spaces.

I couldn’t go inside elevators, and in meetings at work, I had to keep the door open, therefore getting a lot of looks from my colleagues.

Escape rooms were a nightmare to me.

My new year’s resolution was to face my fear and do an escape room, but I’d been putting it off (as we always do).

I wondered how the ghost knew my resolution was. 

That aside, time was running out, and if I didn’t want to be fed to the crocodiles, I’d better start this escape room.

Scanning the room once more, it looked exactly like a museum.

Almost.

Immediately I found something that was out of place.

A shimmery, big juicy diamond.

I knew that Egyptians had gold, emeralds, and rubies, but I never thought they had diamonds.

BEEP INTRUDER BEEP INTRUDER

Of course, a trap. I thought I had watched enough movies to know that. Obviously, I was wrong.

The glass cases started shaking, the artifacts inside clinking together. Dust sprang up from the ground and clouded my vision. It was an earthquake, trembling and quivering violently, until the floor gave way.

Rustle 

I brushed off the dust and stood up in the entirely new room. It looked like an 1800s ship where they still hoarded other ships for their gold. It had a shiny dark oak desk, with curled legs. The walls had faded maps, like the memory of foreign lands have been long forgotten. A dusty leather chair leaned behind the desk, looking like it was waiting for someone to sit on it.

That set design is amazing.

Lastly, a glowing yellow oil lamp sat right in the middle of the desk. Not on the edge, not on the top left corner where people normally put their lamps, but exactly in the middle.

Was that creepy to anyone else?

I walked towards the lamp with caution, as if it was a dangerous object (which it might be).

I reached forward and gently grabbed the handle.

I wouldn’t do that if I were you.

That scratchy voice again.

Then the harp music started playing.

It got louder and louder until I deliberately let go of the lamp.

“...”

The music had come from the same direction as the voice had, which meant that the intercom person was the harp player.

This is getting weirder by the minute.

I decided to leave the haunted lamp alone, and I went investigating the room.

Books, maps, books, fountain pens, and books.

What did these people do all day?

Considering they didn’t have Instagram or Youtube or Starbucks, their life was not one with excitement (probably).

I was looking at a fountain pen when a container of ink sprang up from nowhere, right in front of me. I grabbed it, not taking any precautions whatsoever and opened it.

The ink was as black as a night sky, or a cat’s fur.

And it wasn’t there.

I dipped my pen into the ink to test it out when the pen just hit air. I jabbed the pen in the bottle, the pen just hitting the bottom.

I took the pen out of the bottle and spun it around.

Light was definitely hitting liquid, I was sure of it.

I poked the pen back in, and something appeared.

A word, inscribed on the bottom of the black container in a bright white.

Drawer.

Then it was gone.

Drawer.

What was that supposed to mean?

Drawer.

Drawer.

Drawer.

I circled the desk, spying for a knob to pull on.

Aha.

A little wooden knob was peeking out of the side of the desk, carved like a diamond. It was hidden by shadows, so that’s why it was hard to find. It had a little note written with ink beside the handle:

Pull me.

And that’s what I did.

CLANG

I looked around to see what had hit my elbow, but I couldn’t see anything, since it was completely dark.

This darkness thing was starting to get to me.

Bang 

Smash

Thud

Crash

Flick

I had found the light switch and while the yellow lights flooded my eyesight, I wondered why this escape room was necessary.

What job would need you to complete an escape room to get hired?

I already had a job as a computer programmer in LA, so I wouldn’t need to get hired anyway.

 Once my eyes had adjusted to the light, I leaned over to look at what dropped on my elbow.

A lamp just like the one in the other room had fallen on my right elbow, forming a nasty bruise. The lamp looked similar: rusty metal casing, a squeaky handle, and a light spewing out from inside the lamp, even though the light in the room was on. 

There was one major difference between that lamp and the one in the second room.

The light was purple.

And when I held it, no scratchy voice or creepy harp music would start playing.

I stumbled onto my feet, and once I regained my balance, I took in my surroundings yet again.

There was nothing.

Just a creme-coloured room with a few smudges on the floor here and there.

Who had thought this was a good set design?

Bzz

You have 1 hour left.

Bzz

Cheers to you, scratchy-voice ghost.

I walked around the room, looking at the walls to see if there was anything.

Surprisingly, I found something written on the wall in that same black ink:

Marie-Elizabe

The last name was probably Elizabeth, but the ink was smudged onto the wall, leaving an unpleasant look of dried blood.

I leaned my body onto the wall, wanting to get a closer look, when I pushed the wall and fell on the ground.

A secret door in the wall, how classic.

The door closed behind me with a satisfying click.

Once I had stood up in the once again darkness, I picked up my strange purple lamp from the floor. I grabbed the rusty handle, but it slipped out of my fingers, shattering on the floor. Instead of the light extinguishing like a normal lamp, the purple light spread across the floor, creeping across the ground until the entire floor was glowing purple.

“Hello, you have escaped the room, woohoo, let’s all celebrate,” a familiar scratchy voice said with thick sarcasm.

“W-who is that?” I asked with precaution.

“Oh, no one seems to know me, do you? Does anyone pay attention in History class?” the voice asked with annoyance.

“Before you do that, could you show yourself?” I asked.

“Oh jolly. Just don’t scream, I’m tired of people screaming at me,” it said.

“Ok.”

A...thing stepped out of the darkness. A ghost. Not a normal one, to say the least. It was ghostly transparent, with yellowish blonde hair that swept through the air.

Here’s where thing’s got switched around.

It was wearing an elegant dress, one that would be in an 18th-century portrait. The dress brushed all the way down to the ghost’s ankles, just revealing little slipper-like shoes, kinda ballet shoe-esque. 

The face was what surprised me the most.  

Little lips that were as fragile as a china teacup perched at the bottom of its face. The eyes were glossy and brown, like melted chocolate. The nose resembled...music. That makes absolutely no sense. Soft at times, with vague edges, but sometimes sharp, with bitter points. 

“I’m Marie-Elizabeth Cléry, if you didn’t know, which you probably didn’t,” Marie said, in the middle of straightening her ruffled dress.

“I’m trying not to be rude, but...who are you?” I asked, and looked her in the eye.

(Technically it was through her eye because she was a ghost, but ignore that)

“I was a harpist for Marie Antionette’s court and was born in 1761 in Paris, yada yada yada,” she said with an attitude.

“So were you the one in my hotel room?” I asked and ignored the tone of her answer.

“Yes.”

“But you weren’t wearing that dress.”

“Would you wear a giant uncomfortable dress all year for more than 150 years?” she asked incredulously.

“No, I guess.”

“I only wear it because he said so,” she grumbled, looking at her slippers.

“He who?”

“Never mind, you passed the test anyway, that’s the important thing. Follow me,” Marie said, suddenly opening a hole in the glowing purple floor.

“What is that?!”

“Ah, just follow me,” she said, jumping in the hole.

She disappeared into purple smoke a second later.

“Sigh”

While I backed up, I thought of all the mistakes I had made.

And then I jumped.