Hell’s Fear (Hellfire MC #11)

Chapter Four.

Team Three: Tiny, Diesel and Alice (Hellfire). Blaze and Ali-kat (Rage). Nando (RCPD). Booth (Hawthorne’s). Razor (Unwanted Bastards).

Ali-Kat

I bounced on my toes with excitement. I’d heard so many fun facts about escape rooms and had been trying to book one for ages, but the timing had always been off. Now we were here, and from what I’d overheard, Marissa’s was a masterpiece.

Blaze kept rubbing his hands up and down my arms to calm me down, but I was chomping at the bit. We listened to the guide re-iterate the rules, and then we were through the door, and I froze.

“No!” I gasped as my eyes widened at the brightly coloured red and white striped walls.

“Ali-kat?” my husband asked as I backed straight into his embrace. “It’s a circus theme,” I moaned.

Blaze looked down at me, puzzled.

“I’m terrified of them,” I muttered.

Layers of cloth looking like a big top in red and white covered the ceiling. Rope of lights were tacked to them and brightly lit the room. Dotted on the walls were circus posters, and there was a podium with a ticket booth on it. Next to that, strangely, was a bowl of water. Opposite were some juggling batons, a popcorn machine, and a long trunk. Another wall contained a line of boxes with a hole in the top.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Razor muttered.

“Dude?” Diesel inquired.

“I fuckin’ hate clowns; I have severe coulrophobia,” he admitted.

“Oh crap,” Nando replied. “There’s no doubt we’re going to run into clowns.”

I whimpered, and so did Booth.

Nando spun on him. “You too?” he asked.

Booth nodded.

“This is gonna be a shitstorm,” Nando muttered, and I couldn’t disagree.

“Okay, let’s make a start, or we could end up locked in a room with clowns!” Blaze said. I sent him a horrified look and began searching for a way out.

“There’s some tangram pieces here,” Alice called, looking at a table next to the popcorn stand.

“Do they have sensors on the back?” Tiny replied.

“Yeah,” Alice responded after checking.

“I’ve got four frames here with loads of sensor connections. Maybe they fit into these?” Tiny proposed.

Alice picked up a few and brought them over. Tiny glanced at them and nodded.

“Should we put them together on the table and then hook them up over here?” I murmured.

“Good idea. If Tiny and Alice fix them, we can search for other clues,” Nando suggested.

We had a good poke around, but the truth was we had no idea what we were searching for. It took Tiny and Alice fifteen minutes to fit the tangram puzzles together.

“Now we have to match them to the correct frame,” Alice announced, breaking off her left-hand bottom piece. She carefully checked each frame until she found the corresponding slot. The puzzle fragment lit up when the sensors connected.

Tiny began checking his, and Diesel and Blaze took the other two. Finally, when they’d all been completed, four images stood out.

“Balloons, lions, wands, and clowns,” Diesel mused as his eyes searched the room.

“I can’t see any of those lying around,” Booth replied.

“The popcorn machine?” Razor inquired.

Booth and Nando peered inside but shook their heads.

“I have four clowns on this poster, and I see balloons, wands, and a lion,” Blaze called out. We all wandered over to the posters.

“Add them all up?” Booth suggested.

“Think so, and then what?” I asked. “Maybe we have to push the tangram puzzles the number of times that we count?”

“I can’t spot anything else to enter the numbers into,” Diesel agreed.

“Call out how many balloons,” Tiny said. We added them up and counted fourteen. Tiny pressed fourteen times on the puzzle, and it turned green.

There were eight lions, three wands and nine clowns. As soon as the panels went dark, the popcorn machine switched on. A hand rose in the middle, holding a key.

“How do we get that?”

“No idea,” Blaze replied after examining the casing.

“This seems related,” I mused, gazing at the holey boxes.

“Don’t tell me…” Alice murmured.

“Yeah, someone’s got to put their hand in and find something,” I finished.

“Ah fuck no!” Booth exclaimed and shoved his hands behind his back.

Nando quirked an eyebrow.

“I’m out!” Alice and I said together.

Razor took a deep breath. “If we encounter clowns later on, I’m going to be useless, so I’ll take one for the team.”

He stuck his hand in and winced. “Think this is jello!” After a few seconds, he pulled out a coin covered in jello. Razor pulled out nine more from the other boxes, and Tiny washed them in the bowl next to the ticket booth.

“Put them in the popcorn machine,” Nando said, and Tiny did so. With a swirling noise, the hand vanished, and the key dropped into the slot.

Razor hurriedly washed off gravy, jello, baked beans, custard, and all the rest of the gunk the boxes had been filled with. While he did, we warily opened the door and stepped into the next room.

“Oh, fuck no!” Blaze squeaked and tried to go back. We were on a platform in a long corridor covered in newspapers. There was a thin walkway in the middle, and both sides of it were filled with a luminous green, gooey substance. From the ceiling hung swinging axes. I guess we had to make our way across without falling in.

“Nope!” Razor snapped. “My sense of balance is shocking.”

Alice shoved forward and took a deep breath. “Someone has to go first, right?”

We watched as Alice looked at the axes, all going different speeds and stepped out. She got past the initial three just fine, but the fourth nearly knocked her off.

I squealed and closed my eyes, imaging Alice falling in, but she called out she was okay.

Alice got halfway across when the floor shook, and she staggered on the narrow pathway and began tipping. In desperation, Alice reached out and grabbed hold of an axe handle that dragged her in the other direction. As she fell backwards, Alice shoved up and wrapped herself around the axe handle.

My head comically swung back and forth in time with Alice.

“Diesel!” Alice wailed, and he didn’t hesitate. He moved out and made his way to Alice. The problem was the axe was going too fast for him to rescue her. I knew exactly where this was heading. As Alice lowered her legs to put her feet on the floor, Diesel reached up, and she dropped into his arms. Because the gap was so tiny, Diesel shifted and got knocked into the goo.

“Oops!” Alice giggled as she gazed at her glowing husband.

“The shit I do for you!” Diesel growled. Alice quickly scooted her way to the end as Diesel tried to move through the sludge. Suddenly, without warning, a wave appeared from under our feet and sent Diesel flying down to where Alice stood with wide eyes.

“Tell me that didn’t cover the path,” Nando groaned as Diesel hauled himself out.

“That just got ten times harder for everyone else,” Booth agreed.

They weren’t wrong. Plus, the axes had also sped up. Blaze, Nando, Booth, and I all safely made it across. In my case, I slid at the very end, but the guys pulled me to safety.

That left Razor and Tiny. We’d noticed that each time one of us got safe, the axes swung faster again. They were now swinging rapidly.

“We’ll do this together,” Tiny said. Razor nodded, stepped out, and instantly slipped. His arms windmilled, and he was going down when Tiny hooked his collar and yanked him backwards.

“Yeah, this isn’t a good idea,” Razor muttered.

“How about jumping from axe to axe?” Tiny suggested, and Razor nodded. He waited until an axe appeared and leapt onto it. He wriggled around to face the next, and as it approached, he reached out and jumped onto that. Seeing his plan working, Tiny copied Razor’s actions. They were fine until halfway across the floor shook, and the axes stopped moving.

Razor gingerly put his feet on the path and stepped over the one in his way. He made it two more blades before Tiny also climbed down. And that was their mistake. Once Tiny was down, the axes started swinging again, and both men were sent flying.

Tiny let out a shout as Razor yelped.

Tiny stood up, and my jaw dropped open.

“Holy crap, Tiny, you look like the radioactive hulk!” I gasped.

Tiny wiped some gloop from his eyes and flicked it at me, making me squeal.

The wave appeared again, knocked them both under, and carried them to where we waited.

“Cheating is not allowed!” an announcement said, and a sheepish Razor and Tiny climbed out.

We entered the third room as the door opened. This was set up as a lion’s cage with straw on the floor and metal bars. The walls were painted as outside scenery. The centre featured a large platform with a world map and figurines in pockets.

A table with refreshments stood to one side, and we all grabbed a bite to eat. There were several thick towels for Diesel, Tiny, and Razor, who quickly cleaned themselves up.

“I guess we have to put the animals in the correct country?” Alice asked, studying the table.

“I have a lion,” Razor said, picking up the figurine.

“That’s South Africa,” Tiny rumbled, still drying his hair.

Razor positioned the piece on that, and the area lit up. Twenty minutes later, we placed the last figurines, and the door opened. I was a little suspicious because that one had been quite easy. As the door slid open, both Razor and I darted to the rear. In front of us stood a huge clown’s face, and we had to walk through its mouth.

“Not happening!” I screeched.

A cackle sounded from behind me, and I twisted my neck and shrieked. A clown lumbered into the previous room. I didn’t hesitate and shot past everyone and ran into the clown’s mouth, screaming all the way.

“I better get my wife,” Blaze said, sounding amused. Asshole!

Blaze moved, but Razor decided he wasn’t hanging about either and charged into the next room after me, knocking me aside.

I took him down.

A loud cackle boomed as Razor and I clung together.

As soon as everyone had entered, the door slammed shut, and dim lights switched on. We were in a vast area with the familiar red and white striped walls, but it was empty.

“I don’t understand,” Blaze murmured as we gazed around. Razor and I got to our knees, not seeing any clowns.

“Weird,” I muttered and moved forward. As soon as I did, everything went opaque, and we couldn’t see anymore.

“Oh no,” Alice muttered.

“It’s a maze,” Nando agreed.

“Okay, I can handle a maze!” I sighed in relief.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Diesel grunted.

“Shit, you hate mazes,” Tiny said, turning to his brother.

“Yeah. I always feel trapped in them. They scare the crap out of me,” Diesel admitted, grabbing hold of Alice.

“I’ll take point. There are no clowns, so I should be okay,” I offered.

Hurriedly, I began walking down the only path available. I’d spoken too soon. As I passed a panel, it lit up, and a clown’s face beamed at me before dropping its jaw in a horrible grin. I shook my head, screamed, and backed away into another panel that repeated the same actions. Screaming, I spotted a second clown behind me.

Panic gripped me, and I raced ahead, not paying attention, and bounced straight off a glass wall, knocking myself down.

Someone’s hand landed on me, and I spun on my ass and swept Blaze’s feet from under him.

Blaze crashed down on top of me, and I shrieked again, thinking I was under attack.

“Ali!” Blaze roared, and I stopped screaming.

“That was a clown! In the walls! There’re clowns in the walls!” I squealed, and Blaze winced.

“Calm down,” Blaze demanded, standing.

Terrified, I shook my head at him. As soon as he was upright, so was I and attached to his back. Blaze adjusted my arms and patted my leg.

“Stick together,” Tiny ordered.

Razor was already whimpering.

“Just hold on man, we’ll get you out,” Nando soothed as he took point.

We began walking and discovered that as we approached a see-through section, it would turn opaque to confuse us. Several times, we banged into dead ends because the walls stayed clear.

As we turned a corner, a clown popped out of a wall. Razor stiffened in fear but didn’t react because we had realised that the clowns were images in the walls. Except this one wasn’t. Razor barged straight into him, and the clown grabbed him.

Petrified, Razor screamed in his face, and the clown shrieked back.

Razor screeched again, which the clown copied.

Nando reached for Razor, who turned on him, flailing and throwing punches. Razor was so past logic that it took Tiny and Nando to flatten him, and Nando pulled out some zip ties as Razor became comatose.

“Damn, you carry them everywhere?” Booth demanded as Nando tied Razor’s hands.

“Yeah. They’re not weapons,” Nando rationalised.

“Wow, okay,” Booth snickered. “What we gonna do with Razor?”

“Well, we can’t leave his stupid ass. We’ll have to take turns carrying him,” Tiny replied as Nando lifted Razor. Then Tiny bent and grasped Razor in a fireman’s carry. “Come on.”

“Wait till that fucker wakes up,” Blaze muttered as I gripped him even tighter. “Baby, if you don’t loosen your grip, I’m going to choke out. And then the clowns will have you!”

I immediately relaxed my grip.

We kept walking, taking wrong turns and crashing into dead ends. More than one of us bounced off an invisible wall. We were soon walking with our arms outstretched to save us from any more bumps and bangs.

Rather abruptly, we stumbled into a large room with four exits, and we all looked puzzled.

“The centre of the maze?” Diesel asked as he rolled his shoulders.

Alice rubbed them for him, and Diesel offered her a grateful glance.

“Yeah, I think so, look,” Nando said and pointed as everything turned clear again.

We could see we were halfway across, and we could spot the exit now. A timer displayed an hour and a half remaining to reach the door. No sooner had we spotted it than the mirrors changed, and several clowns rushed at us.

I screamed and took off, and Blaze yelled my name.

In my panic, I kept running, bouncing off of walls and screaming all over again as clowns appeared in front of me.

“Ali-kat!” Blaze thundered, but he’d lost me, and I was alone and being chased. I barrelled into someone and screeched in their face, and Nando grabbed hold of me and dragged me back the way I came.

We passed Razor looking frantic and being bounced on Booth’s shoulder. Razor was bellowing at Booth to run because a clown was chasing them. It was sheer chaos.

Alice let out a shrill shriek, which made me panic even further. Nando kept a tight grip as we joined with Blaze and Razor and then found Tiny with Alice. Booth and Diesel were both missing.

“Keep moving,” Tiny said, carrying Alice.

“Ain’t got no choice. I’m not being stuck in here with these lunatics and the clowns,” Nando replied.

A clown popped up in front of him, and Nando jumped but didn’t let me go. When I tried to run, Nando yanked me back, and I realised I was zip-tied to him. How the hell did that happen?

“We ain’t letting you belt around like a maniac, Ali-Kat,” Nando said as he stroked my shoulder to calm me down.

“I’m not a lunatic!” I gasped and shrieked straight in his ear as a clown popped up, and I bopped it on the nose. The fucking thing bounced and sprung back up. I smashed it harder as Nando laughed.

“It won’t stay down!” I yelled, looking for a weapon.

“Because it’s inflatable!” Nando replied through his laughter.

“You’re not amusing. This isn’t funny, I want my bed!” I wailed, and Nando hugged me tightly.

“Come on, honey, let’s get you out of here,” he murmured.

“Stop giving me a wedgie!” Blaze howled from behind us as Razor encountered the inflatable next. Razor was babbling, and I saw Blaze shaking his head.

“Give me my wife and take this one,” Blaze demanded.

“Not fuckin’ likely,” Nando said and set off before Blaze could argue.

We banged into Diesel next, who had curled into a ball and held his hands over his head. Alice coaxed him up and made him carry her to distract him.

And then we discovered Booth, who ran towards us with three clowns on his tail.

This time, everyone stayed together, and we stumbled out of the maze without warning. The door swished open, and we fell through it and sighed in relief.

Diesel, Razor, and I all slumped to the floor and huddled in a clinch.

Nando broke our zip ties for us.

“I hate fuckin’ clowns,” I muttered, and Razor squeaked in agreement.

“No shit,” he replied.

“This one looks easy enough,” Tiny said, looking around. We were in a darkish room which was full of shelves with tins on. It looked like a circus storeroom. There were two cannons, several trapezes hanging from the ceiling, a spinning wheel for a knife thrower, a rack of costumes, and lots of other miscellaneous items.

“It does?” Alice asked.

“We need to find the pieces that make up that window,” Nando said, pointing at a frame with the lead remaining but the glass missing.

“We better get searching. There’s thirty minutes left. Come on, you guys can collapse once we escape here. There might still be another room,” Booth said.

Diesel, Razor, and I got to our feet and, staying well away from anything resembling a clown, we searched for the glass.

“Five minutes left,” I called when we had all but two pieces.

“Got one!” Diesel exclaimed and rushed over to slot it into place. The stained-glass image was of a big top.

“One fragment remaining, three minutes,” I cried, panicked. We had to get out of here. Who knew if the clowns would return?

“Thirty seconds!” Alice yelled.

I was just resigning myself to being locked in when Blaze ran forward and fumbled with the last piece.

“Fifteen seconds!” Alice warned.

Blaze slotted it in with five seconds left, and the door opened. We stumbled through, and it tried shutting on us but kept encountering our bodies. As soon as we were through, it slammed shut, and a second door opened.

We all advanced and wondered what was next.