My Boyfriend and Brother Left Me in the Escape Room novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Hole
Veronica records her boyfriend and best friend planning to lock her in the dark, goes in on purpose, presses the Warden button, and plays the recording in the lobby until her brother says she was expected to.
Ten minutes before our escape room, I heard my boyfriend and my best friend plan to lock me in the dark.
I was at the lockers with my phone in my hand when their voices came from behind the pillar by the waiver desk.
Darius had the game's floor plan printed out and flat on the desk.
Lyla stood so close that her hair touched his sleeve.
"The last chamber is a black box," Darius said. "I seal the door from the Yard side and type the wrong code three times."
"How long does the lock hold?" Lyla asked, and she sounded worried.
"Sixty minutes. She screams for ten and then she goes quiet. She always does."
"Don't say it like that. She's my best friend."
"Then why are we doing this?"
"Because I want one hour with you and nobody watching," Lyla said.
Darius laughed, low and happy. "Anything for you."
My thumb was already on the screen. I hit record.
Toby walked up with four paper cups of soda and his big careful face.
My brother is thirty-one, and he still carried drinks like a waiter afraid to spill.
"Ten minutes, Lyla," he said. "Not a second more."
"Ten, I promise. She lets the fear run her whole life, Tobes. One night in the dark and she's free."
Toby nodded slowly.
I stopped the recording at thirty seconds.
I emailed the file to myself, locked my phone in locker fourteen, and put the key band on my wrist.
My hands were shaking so hard I missed the slot twice.
Then Lyla came around the pillar with her arms already open.
"There you are, Cori! I've been looking everywhere."
Cori was the name she gave me when we were eight, and nobody else ever used it.
She hugged me the way she had hugged me for twenty years.
When I was eight, Lyla was the one who ran upstairs at midnight and told everyone which door to open.
She had held my hand in every dark room since.
She clipped a tiny penlight onto my zipper.
"You always forget yours. I'll be right beside you the whole way," she said. "I would never leave you alone in the dark."
"I know you wouldn't," I said, and I smiled.
Darius put his hand on the small of my back. "Best surprise night ever, babe."
The costumed attendant gathered us at a heavy door with a paper lantern over it.
"Welcome to the Warden's Yard," he said. "Four rooms, sixty minutes. The last chamber, the Hole, is completely dark."
"If you want out of the Hole, press the red Warden button. The owner will hear you, and he will open it."
Darius's eyes slid to Lyla. Neither of them thought the button mattered.
I looked up. A black camera dome sat over the door, and another over the desk.
If I ran now, it was a whispered joke and my word against three people who loved me.
If I went in, it was on camera, and the owner would be watching.
So I went in on purpose.
We solved the first three rooms in forty minutes. I solved most of them.
Darius kept saying "Nice, babe," and Lyla kept squeezing my arm.
Toby read every clue out loud and did not look at me once.
The Hole was a stone cell with a cot and a heavy steel door.
"I'll come in with you," Lyla said, and took my hand.
She walked me to the middle of the cell. Her fingers slid out of mine.
I heard her soft shoes on the stone, then the door's heavy thud.
Three beeps came from the other side, one after another.
Then there was nothing.
There was no crack under the door and no shape of my own hand in front of my face.
My lungs locked. The black pressed on my eyes.
I sat down on the stone because my knees quit.
I counted out loud, the way I had counted at eight, and I got to forty before my breath broke.
Then a square of gray light came on across the cell.
It was a screen set into the wall, and it showed the Yard from above.
Darius had both hands in Lyla's hair. She was laughing into his mouth.
Toby stood against the far wall with his hands in his pockets, watching the floor.
He did not move. He did not say a word.
The clock over the Yard door read SEALED 59:12.
I crawled to the screen on my hands and knees.
Beside it, glowing red, was a button the size of my palm.
I stopped screaming for them. I stopped begging the dark.
I pressed it, and held it down.
"Warden's office." A man's voice, level and close. "I've been watching the whole thing. Don't move. I'm coming now."
The lock clunked. Light cut across the floor.
He was tall, in a charcoal henley with paint on his knuckles, and he crouched so his eyes were level with mine.
"Orin Merritt, I own the place. Look at me, not the door. You're not locked in, Veronica Keane. Nobody is, in my building."
I let him pull me up.
He took me out through a staff corridor, not the Yard, to the lobby where eight strangers waited in costume for the next game.
I went to locker fourteen. I took out my phone and turned the volume all the way up.
Darius and Lyla came out the exit door, still flushed, with Toby behind them.
I pressed play.
"I seal the door from the Yard side and type the wrong code three times."
Every stranger in that lobby heard it, all thirty seconds.
Lyla's face went white, then wet.
Darius said, "Ronnie, it was a surprise, it was a joke."
My brother looked at the speaker, then at me, and stepped in front of Lyla.
"She told me you'd do this," Toby said.
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