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ice-cap-k · 7 months

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Glassy Eyes

This is where I start getting carried away.

Fanfic of a fanfic. Based on Sixteenthdays' "From the Archives" series. Supposedly takes place after their story Immersive Story Telling.

Their tumblr

Seriously, their stuff is good. It puts this story to shame. I highly recommend you go check them out.

Cross-posted on AO3 here: Glassy Eyes

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[Click]

[GRIAN]

Huh. Would you look at that? Did someone drop off another statement last night? Scar? Scar!

[Sound of door opening.]

[Scar]

What’s happening?

[Grian]

Did you leave this on my desk?

[Crinkling of paper.]

[Scar]

Hm? Oh, that wasn’t me. That was Impulse. He said Ren came in yesterday and dropped it off in a box at the front desk

[Grian]

(Indignantly) I was here yesterday too. Why didn’t he just come on in for an in-person statement like last time? It’s so much more satisfying when it’s in person.

[Scar]

He showed up after you left. And even then, it sounded like he was in a rush. Impulse seemed worried about him. It was like he just dropped off the box and ran out the door.

[Grian]

(Scoffs) Fine. Fine. I’ll have to talk to him about it later. Thank you for telling me.

[Scar]

Any time!

[Door squeaks closed]

[Grian]

I suppose a new statement is still better than a stale one. Statement of Ren D. Dog regarding an escape room experience. Original statement recorded yesterday, apparently, October 5, 2023. Statement begins.

[GRIAN (STATEMENT)]

Before I get to the important bits, I just want to apologize at the beginning for the handwriting ‘cause I’m going to write this in a rush. I probably shouldn’t be taking the time to write this at all, but you people listened and believed me when I told you about my escapades in the sewer and you’re the only ones I can think of who might know something about what I saw or have some sort of connection. I really hope so. I could really use some direction here.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. You’re going to want to know everything, so I’m going to start with the group chat. Er, ok not exactly the chat, but there’s a group I’m in where a bunch of friends plan out fun little outings. I’ve known most of them for years. Good people. We’ve had lots of fun times together. Sometimes we make a day of fun little games. Simple stuff like tag with Nerf guns and extra steps. Other times it’s a huge event that takes a lot of planning, organizing, and a venue.

Two days ago was our last meet-up. It was one of the bigger events we had planned for the year. Some of the fellas in our group had never been to an escape room before, so I figured we had to do something about that. I’ve been to a handful myself. Escape rooms are just good fun, honestly, and are great for big parties. The best places know how to break up big groups of people into littler groups and space them out so they can work through each room without catching up to the people who went first.

I took it upon myself to take charge of the planning. Nobody seemed to have any issue with me handling it this time around so as far as I was concerned it was up to me to throw the grooviest get-together of the year.

I found the place immediately. There was an ad that popped up in my “recommended” section on the forum I use to do research for my podcast. It was for a brand new escape room about to open up on the edge of town. There wasn’t much information available, but that made sense. It was a brand new business. There wouldn’t be any history on the company that a quick Google search would be able to provide. But there was a phone number on the ad, so I made a few calls. Talked to the owners about renting the place out for the day. It sounded like a good one. Cool concept. They were more than happy to set it up and stagger us out in groups as we went through the challenges. They sounded so excited to have so much interest this early into their launch. We got everything all squared away, and I let the fellas in the chat know the date and the time.

Everyone else seemed really into it, too. They pitched in their share of money to cover the costs. It didn’t come out to be that much per person since there were a lot of us and the company only charged a single lump sum for renting the place out for a day.

But the day before we were supposed to go, one of my friends had to back out of the arrangement. Poor thing fell sick and didn’t want to expose us to something nasty. I felt bad for the dude. The least I could do was offer them their money back. I could have covered their share on my own but they didn’t want it back. They just told me, “go ahead and take someone else in my place. I don’t mind.” At that point, everyone in our group chat who wanted to go was already going. Then someone suggested that, since I planned this one out, I should ask a friend of mine who wasn’t already part of the group to join in on the fun. Everyone was cool with it. Excited at the idea of a possible new addition to the group, even.

So I called up my good friend BigB. We used to hang out a lot back in university, but I hadn’t seen him in a while. This felt like a good opportunity to catch up. BigB said, “sure thing, man,” and we were set for fun times ahead.

So the big day rolls around and we get to this place and meet up with the others. Greetings and introductions go around, and we get ready to rumble. The host comes out to meet us. She explained the game and what we could expect. Our whole party would be divided up into groups of two. There would be timers running for pairs to try to solve all the puzzles in a room. Either they passed in the time limit, or the time limit would run out and they would be ushered to the next room. Either way, it would free the place up for the next pair to come in and try their hand at the reset puzzles. Then they walked us through the safety measures. Each room had a buzzer by the door that could be hit to let the workers know that you needed to get out. It would unlock the door and deactivate any machinery or whatever fancy doohickies they had in the place. Sometimes people get claustrophobic or anxious in a confined place. Especially when put under pressure.

It was all super chill and fun at first. A bunch of us hung out in the lobby while we waited for the first few pairs to go. When it was me and BigB’s turn, the host waved us over and we went in the door together.

BigB might not have been to an escape room before, but the man was absolutely brilliant. We made it through the first two rooms at lightning speed. The challenges weren’t too difficult, in retrospect, but they weren’t super easy either. It seemed like every time I got stuck in a rut, too caught up on a detail to figure things out, B would pat me on the shoulder and point out something I missed. We never went past the time limit. He was always a pretty observant guy when we hung out at the theater, but I never really stopped to appreciate it until now.

I kept marveling at how different it was compared to other places you see nowadays. It was honestly pretty clever. They modeled the inside like some big dollhouse. Fancy decorations and plastic furniture and all. There were mannequins set up to look like a setting with people. A few of the figures that were supposed to be little kids even had dolls of their own in their plastic arms.

It was in one of these rooms that B first pulled me aside. I had been trying to puzzle over a lock on the fake kitchen’s fridge. I’d assumed it would be like before, and that he’d blow my mind with some silly detail I had missed, but instead, he told me that the doll was looking at us. He pointed to this little glass doll in the lap of a mannequin kid. Its head was sort of tilted towards us. The glassy eyes glittered.

That creeped me right out. Sent a shiver right up my spine. But I also figured it was just a prop. Maybe even part of the puzzle. So I took what he said pretty seriously. I think that might have surprised him that I believed him so easily.

I tried waving my hand in front of the doll, moving around the room, I even picked the thing up. It didn’t seem to follow me as I moved, and there was nothing I could find that was off about the doll, so I shrugged it off and said maybe it was just a red herring. He didn’t look too convinced, but he didn’t argue. We ended up finding the key in a cake and moved on to the next room.

It was a bathroom. It was kind of small for the two of us, but we searched the place for the next set of clues. At some point, I opened a cupboard under the sink and nearly jumped out of my skin. There was another doll, sitting pretty on the shelf facing outwards to smile at some unsuspecting fool like me who opened the door. It spooked me so bad, that I bumped into the full-body mirror hanging against the wall and it came crashing down.

Broken glass got everywhere. I was ok. No cuts or anything. BigB was spooked something fierce. He looked me over to make sure I was ok. I mostly just felt bad about damaging the place's property. I was already rehearsing an apology and coming up with a payment plan to present the owners with when BigB got distracted. I asked him what was up, and he turned me around.

Behind where the mirror was hanging was a small door. Only a few feet wide. Maybe two feet tall. It reminded me of the house I grew up in, where my bedroom closet had a little door for easy access to the plumbing in the bathroom on the other side of the wall. It looked like those tiny maintenance doors. You couldn’t walk through it, but it was big enough for someone around our size to crawl through. There were no cobwebs like the one back in my old closet. This one looked nice and clean. Almost like it was well-used.

BigB thought we should hit the button near the last door. We could contact the hosts, let them know we broke the mirror. Our round would be forfeited, though. I wasn’t ready for that. We were only halfway through, and up until then, our rounds had been fantastic. The stuff of legends.

If I’m going to be honest, the little door also got me curious. We were in an escape room. How was I supposed to know it wasn’t part of the game? For all we knew, we had accidentally skipped a bunch of steps that would have eventually told us to move the mirror. I said as much to BigB. He seemed hesitant, but then I said that if the door ended up leading to nothing more than a bunch of pipes, we’d move on. I was at least hoping we could finish up with this room or go until our timer ran out before we contacted the hosts. Just to make things go a little bit longer. Beat one more riddle for the sake of my own satisfaction.

He actually agreed. So I kneeled down, brushed some of the broken glass bits out of the way, and he opened the door.

There was a whole tiny corridor on the other side! Like a mini hallway. BigB saw that and elbowed me in the side. “Looks like you were right. We just skipped an entire room.” He crawled in first, and I followed.

The hallway ceiling sloped upward almost immediately so we could stand back up and start walking again. This part of the building was noticeably different from the rest. Up until then, the rooms had been homely and tacky. Plastic and overstuffed. Full of dolls and cheap props. The walls and floor of this hall were grey concrete and hard edges.

The dolls were still around, though. Mostly the smaller ones. None of the mannequins. A mix of plastic and porcelain faces stared blankly out at the wall from lines of shelves.

The further we went, the less put-together the dolls seemed to be. There would be a cracked cheek here and a few missing strands of hair there, but before long entire swathes of shelves were full of doll bits. Not even entire dolls. Just their arms and legs and heads all lined up.

I had also noticed that the hallway seemed less well kept than the rest of the building. The door had seemed clean, and I suppose the hard floor did too, but clear strands of what looked like spider silk were hanging from the ceiling. Memories of what I saw with Doc were still pretty fresh in my mind, so when I started noticing doll parts tangled and left hanging in thicker knots of strands, I could feel myself losing my nerve.

I tried suggesting to BigB that we turn back. I’m pretty sure I made some excuse about how we must have accidentally found the storage rooms. We hadn’t seen anything that looked like a clue or puzzle since we came through the door. But by now BigB seemed hooked. He begged me to go just a little further with him. He just wanted to check the place out. If it was just storage, then as long as we didn’t mess with anything there was no harm in being there. We could always go back once we got to the end.

I couldn’t say no to him. I just couldn’t. His reasoning was sound, sure, but there was a spark in his eye that I just didn’t have it in me to douse. He was really curious about this place for some reason I could no longer fathom. But I was the one who suggested going through the door in the first place. I could ride this thing out a little longer.

I tried. I really did try.

We didn’t go very far when BigB took the lead. He mumbled something I didn’t hear. When I asked him to repeat, he called back a little louder, “The dolls are watching us again.”

Every hair on my body stood on end. I looked at the dolls hanging from the ceiling and at the ones lined up against the wall, and rows upon rows of eyes stared down at us. The plastic faces remained unchanged, but this time I could visibly see the painted marbles in the eye sockets moving to keep pace with us. Disembodied doll heads turned in place to continue staring.

But BigB kept going. Even as I tugged on his arm. I asked, no, demanded to know how he wasn’t freaked out, but he just shook me off. “We’re almost to the end of the hall,” he said. And he took my hand. “There’s something there. I can see it. Can’t you? Don’t you want to know what it is?”

I don’t know what came over me, but it was almost like the moment his hand touched mine his excitement sort of rubbed off on me. I don’t know how to fully explain it. It was like I was feeling what he was feeling. My fear was still there, but now there was also a burning curiosity. I couldn’t see what was at the end of the hall like he could. I didn’t see the end at all, but I didn’t run away. I let him drag me forward until we passed the threshold of another doorway. This one was normal-sized. There was no door, just the opening. I couldn’t see anything past the doorframe, but I trusted BigB. He seemed to be able to see ahead of us. So it came as a complete shock when I took a step forward and the ground was just gone!

The place had no floor. Both me and B dropped screaming into the black. I don’t know how deep it was or how far we fell, but if there wasn’t a bottom, there at least had to be a ceiling because a lot of those cobwebby strands hung down deep in clumps. They caught at us like vines, dragging at our limbs. My arms are still littered with tiny little crisscrossed cuts from falling through them and having them break across my skin, but they did manage to slow our fall. The two of us hit a point where there were so many little strings that they wrapped around us like a net and kept us from going any further.

I just hung there for a moment, catching my breath, trying to figure out what the hell had happened. BigB was hanging next to me, struggling for a handhold on the strings holding him up. And I think it was right then that I realized that this stuff wasn’t spider silk at all. It was too thick. Not stretchy enough. I think it might have been fishing line. It felt like that. Like thick, clear, plastic lines. They felt about as comfortable as you’d expect a fishing net to be.

We couldn’t see the bottom from where we hung. Couldn’t see the top where we came from either. I could see other things hanging above us and below us. Caught in suspension by the hanging strands. There were a few more dolls. And some rocks, curiously enough. Big rocks, little rocks, literal statues. I didn’t try to make sense of it. What was happening didn’t make sense. I also didn’t spot the human skeleton until BigB gasped and pointed it out.

It was hanging in front of him, maybe two yards away from him and even further from me. It had to have been there for years. The flesh had long rotten off its bones, making it impossible to tell if it was once a man or a woman. Only a few scraps of cloth hung from their arms and legs. It hung splayed out, supported by the plastic wires looped around its wrists and ankles. Another loop wrapped under its chin and around its neck like a noose. It kept the skull upright. Almost like it would be looking directly at BigB if it could, but there were no eyes in those sockets.

As silly as it sounds, the skeleton almost looked laughable hanging there. Sure, it probably spelled doom and gloom for the two of us if we stopped to think about how long they had been down here without anyone noticing. But the way it hung there suspended by its arms and legs, it was like a kid’s puppet. Tossed aside, limp and small and waiting.

“This is it. We’re going to die down here,” B wailed.

I tried to calm him down. Talk it out and come up with some sort of plan for both our sakes. I needed to believe it as much as he did. I started struggling. Some of the strings shifted as I pulled on them, which wasn’t very comforting. Still, the lines were sturdy enough to hold us. Maybe we could climb them? We could go back up and out the way we came. Or if we couldn’t get up, we could work our way down. There had to be a bottom. Once we got down there we could figure something else out.

BigB didn’t really like that second idea. “Don’t go down,” he begged. “Down is so much worse.” Frankly, I was inclined to believe him.

I managed to convince him to try climbing up. I was starting to make some progress myself. The strands weren’t the most sturdy things. I could feel some of them snap or give way above me as I dragged myself up a few inches, but there were tons of them. Even with a few breakages, I was still able to hold myself relatively steady. I think seeing that helped him calm down. He started pulling himself up after me. As he moved, the strings swung a little. He found himself shifting back and forth, swinging closer and closer to the skeleton. He didn’t seem too enthused about it. I tried suggesting he shift his weight a little to the other side. He did, but by then he already had momentum. He swung really close to the skeleton. Within a foot or two, and my stomach dropped as the strings holding its right hand began to quiver.

I thought maybe BigB had shifted something loose above us, and it was hitting the strings holding the skeleton, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. To my horror, the thing moved forward. It hung limp, but its limbs moved independently like a marionette under the skillful hand of a puppeteer. One dead hand lurched forward, wrapping around a clump of the strings holding BigB in a way that would have been downright painful if the thing had had any muscle or nerves left. And then the strings holding the skeleton’s other arm aloft twitched and swung forward to wrap around BigB’s shoulders. The head leaned in, the jaw opened, and somewhere above us a voice said, “What good timing. I’m always looking for good replacement parts.”

BigB screamed. I’m pretty sure I screamed too. Bones rattled as B tried to throw the skeleton away from him, but I could only watch in horror as the puppet strings controlling its arms twisted around B and wrapped him tight. He thrashed. I screamed at him to hang on. I wasn’t sure what I would do, just that I had to do something. The only thing I could think of was getting to BigB, so I climbed. I grabbed at strings and clumps and whatever else I could to drag myself over to him.

In my desperate desire to help, I stopped paying attention to how sturdy the strings were. They were giving out like crazy in my hands. Things above me shifted. I remember reaching out to BigB, but then B shoved the skeleton back and screamed at me to look out. I looked up and saw one of the sharp rocks that had been hanging above us start to fall. I watched as it came down at me. I felt it slam into my skull, and that was the last thing I remembered. It all went black after that.

When I opened my eyes, I was back in the fake little bathroom. I was lying on the tiled floor next to the broken bits of mirror with some dudes’ faces blocking out the light. My head hurt something crazy.

My friends and the hosts had come to get me and BigB when we didn’t respond to the buzzer signaling time had run out. They saw me on the ground next to some broken glass and a gash on my head and panicked. I felt bad. I must have been a sorry sight. They picked me up and started patching me up. And I was grateful for the help. But then one of them asked where BigB went.

I freaked out. I started to point at the wall, shouting that he was still behind the little door, but everyone just looked at me like they were confused. I tried explaining what had happened, how we went through the little door behind the mirror in the storage room, but as I started describing the hall, the owners of the establishment cut me off and told me there was no door there.

The really freaky thing was that there wasn’t. I went back to that bathroom and the space on the wall was empty. I even ran my hand along it, but there were no seams or edges that I could feel. The one owner was even nice enough to peel back the wall paper after we searched for BigB for an hour with no luck. There was nothing there. It was like the door had never been there. Maybe I had just hit my head when I broke the mirror and dreamed it all. But dream or not, we never did find BigB.

Everyone, me, my friends, even the owners, we all practically tore that place apart looking for him. And when we ran out of places to look inside the building, we started combing the area outside for him. We weren’t able to find anything. When it started to get dark, someone called the police. A few officers came out to check the place out. They asked us a few questions and took our numbers, but it’s not like they came up with anything we hadn’t already found. It was like B vanished without a trace.

I’ve been at my wit's end trying to track him down since then. I don’t think I’ve gotten any sleep these past two days. I’ve even started putting up posters asking if anyone’s seen him. Everyone else is pitching in, but I can’t help but feel responsible. I’m the one who asked him to come along on this trip, and I lost him when we were partnered up. If there’s a chance that my dream wasn’t actually a dream, then I even convinced him to go down that creepy hall with me. If anyone should have gotten got, it should have been me.

I know what you’re probably thinking. Doc already left because of something freaky we saw. And now BigB’s gone too. This is different from when Doc left. Doc can handle himself. He’s crazy strong and smart. Doc avoided me, but he didn’t completely vanish. People still saw him.

This isn’t Doc we’re talking about here. It’s BigB. BigB wouldn’t hurt a fly. BigB can stick to himself sometimes, but he doesn’t get lost in projects and vanish like Doc can. He’s just gone.

Well, most of him is. While we waited for the police to arrive, I stuck my hand in my pocket and found something that hadn’t been there before.

I didn’t know what to do with it or how they got there. It makes no sense. The police didn’t bother with them, so I’m leaving them with you on the off chance they might be some sort of clue.

I think they’re BigB’s eyes.

[Grian]

Statement ends.

[Increasingly panicked breathing.]

[Grian]

I… I can’t. I just- I have to go call-

[Click]

[Grian]

I tried calling BigB. I tried a lot. He’s not picking up. Despite Ren’s questionable honesty about his own name, he’s proven to provide accurate statements. At least as far as we have been able to tell. And as much as I wish it wasn’t true, much of what appears in this statement has been backed up with follow-up research.

An inquiry to the police station confirmed that Ren and a handful of others had reported BigB missing two days ago, and considering BigB is a fully grown adult with the right to come and go as he pleases without telling anyone, I wouldn’t be surprised if they continue to drag their feet on an investigation.

As for the escape room establishment, Ren had left an address and printout of the ad he had found online in the box he left at the front desk. I asked Scar to look into it and he managed to contact the owners. They claimed they have no clue how Ren and BigB managed to find the room with the dolls. The walls have been inspected, but no traces of a “small door” are to be found. The wall is solid. There’s no possible way they could have gone through, or that BigB might have ended up in the walls, though they have since reviewed the blueprints they received upon purchasing the building. Upon further inspection, they found that on the opposite side of the same wall where Ren described the door is an empty space. No room is indicated. Or anything, really. Just empty space. They’re currently looking into having a contractor take a look for signs of a boarded-up room. The sooner, the better.

They also provided a little information on the building’s history as it was told to them upon purchase of the premises. This information we later confirmed after searching through public records. Apparently, the building used to house the production of doll parts, which would explain a lot. It wasn’t a full production plant. Too small for that. Rather, it was a hub for touch up work and assembling the doll pieces before they could be sold to local toy shops. The new owners took it upon themselves to use some of the leftover products they found lying around as props in their escape rooms.

Pearl dug through a few newspaper articles in the archives and found that the previous owner had died in a very peculiar accident. I’ll, uh, spare you the details, but it appears they were caught in the wires used for assembling puppets. The place had been left to rot for almost twenty years before the current owners bought the property.

Oh yeah! As for the other gift Ren left for us in the box…

[Dull rattling]

He wasn’t lying. There were a pair of eyes in there.

They’re not really BigB’s eyes. They can’t be. They’re made of glass. They’re those freaky kinds of weighted marbles they use in porcelain dolls. The ones that are made to blink at you when you tilt the things back and forth. I can see why he said they were BigB’s eyes, though. They’re the same shade of brown as his. And have that same gradient effect at the edges where it gets a little darker all the way around his irises. The resemblance is kind of uncanny.

They were definitely made to look just like BigB’s.

I can’t find it in me to have Impulse take them to storage. I don’t like them looking at me, but it feels wrong, somehow, to have them locked away in a dark room. I’ll probably just keep them in one of my desk drawers until we find him.

[Sighs]

I’ll call Ren later if he can stop his search long enough to let me help.

Heh. We should keep a nickel jar for whenever one of us goes missing. Between me and my friends, we’d make a fortune.

[Click]

#whumptober 2023 #prompt no. 6 #recording #“It should have been me”#minecraft: hermitcraft #the magnus archives #creative writing #creepy dolls #missing persons #renthedog #bigbst4tz2 #grian #goodtimeswithscar #horror #the hermit archives #from the archives #escape room gone wrong #Human remains

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