I Went To One Of Those Extreme Haunted Houses, But Something Went Horribly, Horribly Wrong

I was never much for Halloween mazes; there were a lot better ways I could think of to spend 35 dollars. I guess I never saw the point knowing it’s not real and all. I mean really, how scary can a bunch of actors and smoke machines really be? Steve though…he was so amped to go, I just couldn’t tell him no.

“Alright, we’re here.” said Jade.

“Remember.” said Tanya, lined up to get in. “Stay close to each other so that we don’t get separated this time.”

“What do you mean this time?” I said. “Separated?”

“Yeah.” Tanya looked back and said. “It gets crazy inside the mazes.“

I didn’t take her too seriously… It was only a silly Halloween maze after all.

The line attendant started to make an announcement which broke my train of thought, “Please get your IDs ready so we can get the waivers signed and let you be on your way!”

“Why do we need waivers?” I said.

“So the actors can touch us!” said Steve, before the line attendant could open her mouth to speak.

“And we want that why?” I looked at Steve, then the rest of the group, who also seemed all for the idea.

“It brings the whole being-chased-by-a-killer feeling to life.” Said Tanya.

“Okay…” I said louder than I intended.

“Alright! Time to be scared to death!” Said Steve

“Yaaaaaaaay.”

From the outside, the maze looked quite big and intimidating, though as it turned out, the massive building was just where souvenir photos and payments were taken. Past the building and through to the outdoors was where the real fun began. The Haunted Corn Maze which then led to the Carnival Mirror Maze.

“Here it is!” Said Steve.

“Still not sure I’m seeing the point of this…” I said, with a semi puzzled look on my face.

“The corn maze! The part everyone looks forward to!!!” Steve moved closer to me and started whispering. “Plus, places like this will have the girls all over us. The experience is to die for.”

“We have to get through the maze while all sorts of monsters and killers chase us.” said Tanya.

“Right, we went over that…but I mean-” Mid-sentence, what Steve had said settled in and I shut up, realizing the quieter I was, the better chance we had of Steve’s plan working.

“Can we please make sure to not get separated this time?” said Jade.

“I’ll see you on the other side, be quick and stick together. Don’t get separated!”

Steve wasted no time ignoring Jade’s request and running off into the maze, which was actually really well put together. The long dirt pathways, walled by tall cornstalks, did a good job of forcing a sense of foreboding to wash over me and the other maze-goers. Combined with the dim artificial twilight, this place was actually kinda creepy!

By the time we got inside the maze chaos had already broken loose. People were screaming and running into each other all over the maze, seemingly with no direction. Everyone had lost their minds, or at least that’s how it seemed…Something must have really freaked them out.

We were about halfway to the mirror maze when I heard a very realistic chainsaw start buzzing over the sounds of people screaming in terror. Whatever it was that I was walking toward, Steve was running away from…until he ran into me, knocking us both to the ground.

“Ru…run for your lives!” yelled Steve, as he scrambled to his feet and ran off into the darkness.

Immediately, I noticed the chainsaw buzzing had stopped. I picked myself up and looked at the girls.

“Steve really gets into this doesn’t he?”

“No..some…something is wrong.” said Jade.

“Something does seem really different with him.” said Tanya.

“Okay?” I said, holding back a laugh. “What is he possessed or something?”

Both of them looked as if they had seen ghosts. Granted, I knew they scared easily, but I was under the impression that they enjoyed it, so I stopped talking and kept walking. We followed the path until we came across some strange marks on the ground. I thought someone had been dragged off the path into the cornstalks, but strangely enough, I hadn’t come across any actors…The people seemed to be hiding and no one else had come in behind us.

We kept making our way through the maze and came across a man lying on his back. Only his upper body was visible on the path, while his legs hidden by the cornstalks. The man reached his hand out to me. Naturally, I grabbed his hand to help him up and pulled. I froze in horror… His body was severed at the bottom of his torso. The rest was…gone.

I looked back at the girls, trying to hide my shock and horror, but the looks on their faces said it all…this maze had just gotten real.

Frozen in shock, I continued holding his hand and staring in disbelief. His body just…stopped…at the torso. The look in his eyes told me that he was definitely not an actor. His grip went limp in my sweaty hand, his face white and the life left his eyes. It wasn’t until Tanya let out a war cry and ran off that I gained the capacity to let go of the poor man’s hand and try to make sense of my surroundings..not that there was any more than corn, darkness and terror surrounding me at this point.

That was also when I realized that Tanya hadn’t run down the path, but instead, into the tall corn stalks.

“Drew, I’m scared.” Jade almost whispered. She grabbed my arm with both of her trembling, little hands. “Please don’t lose me.”

“Wait! What the fuck is going on???” I started to pace, realized that the path was a bit narrow and walked in tight circles instead. “We need to get out of this fucking maze!”

“I know, but. I…I’m scared Drew” Said Jade, who was nearly crying and walking in tight circles right behind me.

The truth was, I was fucking scared too. I picked a fine day to leave my phone in the car, along with my favorite knife, which I carried with me basically everywhere. Oh, and my pre-game alcohol. How would I protect Jade? I didn’t even have a way to protect myself! Come to think of it, Steve had convinced all of us to leave our phones, and in the girls cases, their purses in his car, so as not to provide any kind of distraction whilst in the maze so we could better immerse ourselves in the experience, to make it seem more real. Well, it was real alright and I was going to die sober.

“I won’t lose you.” I looked around. “Maybe we should head towards the screams. That’s where the other people are.” I didn’t sound reassuring, but it was the best I could do in our situation.

“Are you crazy!?” “I’m not getting cut in half!!!” Said Jade.

“Oh, so you’re planning to fight the killer off chainsaw and all since we’re staying here?”

I know, I sounded like a dick, but this really wasn’t the time to be arguing with Jade.

“Well…I…” said Jade, probably realizing I was right.

“Right. We stay together and find the crowd…use them for cover.” I said.

“But if they are screaming, doesn’t that mean that they are in trouble too?

“We just need to get close enough to someone else in this damned maze to make sure neither of us are the killer’s next victim.” I looked at the ground. “When the killer attacks someone else, that is when we will make a break for it, okay!?”

Jade looked me with large sorrowful eyes “What about everyone else?”

“After seeing what just happened.. Jade, It’s every man for himself. Trust me on this one…”

Jade squeezed my arm. “Just don’t let me go.”

“I won’t.”

It was scary enough seeing the man that was cut in half, but I was able to convince myself that he was an isolated incident…then we walked past 5 or 6 more. The bodies that we passed as we made our way through erased any trace of that idea…I realized we were in a bad place.

Also, it seemed that I was so caught up talking, I had failed to pay attention to where I was walking. I had no idea where we were, or where we were headed. I was also partly distracted with the thoughts running through my head…and partly with what we were seeing as we wandered the maze. Luckily the corn maze wasn’t big enough to be terribly difficult to navigate.

Jade opened her eyes. “We’re lost aren’t we?”

I thought it was strange she didn’t keep her eyes open, although I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to see the gruesome picture this maniac painted. The killer seemed to be going for quantity, not quality. Even though I only saw only 6 of the killer’s sloppy kills on the maze paths. I could only imagine what it looked like in the tall stalks.

“Lost? No…Well kinda…I mean I was…thinking.” I said.

“You think this is the time to be daydreaming! You have to get us out of here!”

“Then we need to hurry. It’s too quiet in here…I don’t think there are very many of us left in the maze.” I said.

I stopped talking when I heard rustling that was slowly coming toward us. Jade heard it too and hid behind me. My heart started to beat rapidly, and I became a little short of breath.

A hand popped out of the corn, then a face…it was Tanya.

“Tanya!” said Jade.

“Have you seen Steve?” I said.

Tanya didn’t say anything to either of us, or even make eye contact.

“Are you alright?” asked Jade

Tanya didn’t say anything…with her mouth. Her face said it all. She starting walking toward us. After her 3rd step, she fainted, falling face first into the dirt. I walked up to her, with Jade still holding onto my arm. Once I was close enough I saw the knife in her back and the blood starting to pool. “Tanya!” I yelled. I knelt down to examine her wound and immediately noticed the handle of the knife. Then I choked a little bit. Either the killer and I shared the exact same taste in knives, or this was my knife which I had left behind in Steve’s car.

I pulled the knife out of Tanya’s back. Jade screamed and jerked away from me. I turned around to face her and she took a couple steps back.

“What’s wrong?”

“Drew!? How…how could you!?”

“You can’t be serious!” I took a step forward. “I haven’t been out of your sight since we got here.”

“That’s what scares me.” Jade took a step, leaving her back against the opposite edge of the path from me and Tanya. “I know that’s your knife!”

I looked down at my hands, which were now covered in blood – Tanya’s blood. I was frantic, what just happened?! I looked back at Jade. “Yeah, the same knife I left in STEVE’S car!” I realized another step toward Jade might make her run off to the same fate as Tanya. “The same Steve that convinced us to leave our things in his car…the same Steve who we last saw leaving the scene of a man who… was cut in half! That’s where my mind was when…”

“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!”

Jade screamed and disappeared into the corn stalks. I ran in after her and kept going until I reached a small clearing that was empty, save for a cross, which at some point, probably housed a scarecrow. At the end of the small clearing was the entrance to the mirror maze.

I thought that the corn maze was creepy, and that was before there was a maniac running through it killing people…The mirror maze though, it put the corn maze to shame. It was nearly pitch black inside, the only lighting came from the glow in the dark floor tiles. I’m not sure whether it was scarier that the beginning of the maze was empty, or that the reflections in the mirror were perfectly clear despite the lack of lighting.

I told myself to keep calm, remain a cool head about this whole situation or else I’ll never escape here alive.

For a split second I got so caught up looking at the distorted reflections of myself in the mirrors, I had forgotten why I had run into the mirror maze in the first place.

Then I felt a tug on my pant leg.

“Whaaaa!” I jumped a little, then spun around. I didn’t see anything but mirrors. I kept looking around and the back of a little girls head appeared in a few of them. I looked down to see a small girl, around 7 or so, she had dark silky hair and pale skin which seemed to glisten in this Mirror Maze. She was wearing a matted and torn white dress, with a matching white bow headband in her hair.

“Can you help me?” Said the little girl.

How was she so calm?

“What is your name little girl?” I asked.

“Helen.”

Did she just almost smile.

“Helen. you should get out of here. it’s dangerous.”

“I’m all alone now. Can I come with you?”

I thought it was peculiar that a girl so young was in here. It was even stranger to me that she didn’t even seem scared. I just chalked it up to a curious kid who had snuck in and now found herself lost. Still though, why the strange attire? There was something not quite right, I felt an eerie presence. She was kinda creepy, but I could not abandon her.

“Did you come here alone?” I asked.

“Come on. This way.”

Helen walked down what I think was a mirrored hallway; the mirrors, poor lighting and fear made it hard for me to get a bearing on my surroundings. Helen’s reflection left all of the mirrors. I kept watching, but couldn’t keep up. Helen disappeared down the dark hallways.
Where did her reflection go? I can still see mine!

I continued to walk in what had appeared to be the direction she had gone.

“Helen! I thought you were coming with me!”

“Shhh.” Said Helen. “I’m over here.”

I looked around and I still couldn’t see a reflection of Helen, just every angle of myself. I turned and looked behind me…still nothing.

“This way, we are almost there.”

I turned back and caught a slight glimpse of Helen’s white dress moving straight down a hallway to a set of doors. With my eyes and mind playing tricks on me, it looked almost like she was gliding. I followed her outside to the same small clearing I had crossed to get into the mirror maze. This time through the scarecrow was back.

It was now getting dark outside. At the opposite end of the small clearing I saw a petite silhouette sitting huddled in a ball, hugging herself while rocking back and forth in a fetal position. I walked forward to get a better look at the scarecrow in the dark… Only to see that it was Steve!

I gasped and stumbled back, slightly losing my footing. I stared up at him. He was wearing overalls and a red flannel shirt which had been stuffed with straw. After regaining my footing, I slowly approached once again to examine my friend. His throat had been slashed ear-to-ear! My jaw dropped, all I could do was shake my head in horror and disbelief and slowly take a couple of steps back. What was going on here?!
What was happening?!

“He slit his throat.” I heard Helen say from behind me.

“What!” I turned my back to the figure across the clearing and looked at Helen.

“He killed them all, then he slit his throat.”

There was that almost smile again! Helen wasn’t making sense and was creeping me but. Something was definitely off about her. I knelt down to Helen’s level to hear what she was whispering, but she stopped talking.

“You crazy little girl! Why would he-How could he-”

“Maybe he had help.” Helen was beaming, not even attempting to hide her smile.

A cold chill hit me and traveled the length of my spine, causing me to shiver a little as the pieces fell into place. Before I could try to stand back up, Helen grabbed the collar of my shirt.

“They all deserved it. Now they will know what it’s like to be here alone.”

I closed my eyes.

“And guess what?” Helen pulled me close and whispered in my ear; “You’re next!”