Chapter 1
Well, let’s start off with who this story is about, that would be a good start to this story. Her name is Adlee Cade, I guess you could say that she is an outgoing person. She had an amazing life, a family who loved her, a boyfriend who was also amazing, she is in high school and on the honor roll. So, I guess you could say that she has had a great life and a lot going for her so far. Well, that was up until this one specific day that you are about to learn about. Enough about all that let’s get to the story, shall we?
Okay so imagine you are standing in a hallway that seems to never end, a hallway of your nightmares. The kind of hallway that you’d see in horror movies, the kind of hallway that is dark has little to no lighting, the kind of hallway that makes you feel as if you have someone standing over your shoulder. That is the hallway that I am currently standing in.
This hallway is something straight out of a horror movie, with 'black tiles with grey between them, the walls are an old tan wallpaper that was never taken care of. The roof is old and leaking something foul-smelling, the roof is covered in what I’m guessing is mold stains from the number of leaks it appears to have. The thing that makes this hallway seem more and more like a horror movie is that there are no windows and only one door. This door is at the end of the hallway, whoever decided to paint this door must have had a horrible taste when it came to interior design simply since the door is a dark green color. The color of the door reminded me of either a forest green or even maybe nasty pea soup that was expired and molded.
Either way, the door was at the end of the hallway. The hallway feels as if it's ten football fields long, But the door keeps getting closer and closer to me. The closer I get to the door the more I can hear and feel my heart pounding in my head. The closer I get the more details of the door to pear. The doorknob is an old skeleton key type of handle, there is a peephole in the shape of a skull. Kind of ominous if you ask me, on the tiles in front of the door is a bright green liquid that’s bubbling. It seems to be coming from under the door, I am scared to get too close to it. What if it’s acid or something dangerous? What if it’s a trap?
Just as I approach the door, the handle starts to slowly turn. I try to step back from the door, but it isn’t working. No matter how hard I try to turn around and run away I can’t move. There is something wrong here, why can’t I run? What is wrong with me, why can’t I stop myself? Before I know it, the door is open, right in front of me, there is a little girl. She can’t be more than five, maybe six years old.
She isn’t looking at me but behind me, she is a beautiful little girl. Blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, she’s wearing a dress that maybe one would wear to a funeral, all black and has lace on the arms. Just then she turned her head and looked straight at me. Something about how she looked at me felt as if she was looking into my soul. What were only a few seconds felt as if it had been an hour of her just looking at me dead straight into my eyes.
“What... there’s no way...how is this possible,” she thought to herself. As she stood at the doorway with the little girl she asked “wh... Who are you? Wh... Why do you... Why do you look like me when I was a child?”. The little girl, staring into Adlee’s eyes, simply started to laugh. This scared Adlee down to the core, scared her so deeply she questioned if she was sleeping, and this was a nightmare. The little girl finally answered Adlee, “My name is Adlee, what is your name? Where did you come from?”.
“As if this couldn’t be more out of a horror movie,” teenage Adlee thought to herself. At this very moment, teenage Adlee dropped down to one knee and looked at the young girl who looks very much like herself and has the same name as her. Teenage Adlee asked, “How old are you?”. The little girl looked at teenage Adlee confused as to why she didn’t answer her questions. The little Adlee was curious, perplexed even. She hasn’t seen anyone else in this hallway or even on this floor since her father first took her there.
Little Adlee took a step back from the strange girl. She looked confused and scared, not sure if teenage Adlee was a good person or someone there to hurt her. Teenage Adlee, still kneeling down “Don’t be scared, it’s alright. Are your parents around here somewhere?”. She then looked down at the floor only to realize she was kneeling in the stuff that was oozing out from under the door. “What is this stuff, Adlee? Why is it all slimy?” exclaimed teenage Adlee, she looked up to find that the little girl was no longer there.
Teenage Adlee stood up, looked around, and stepped into the room. When she stepped into the room she gasped. She noticed something similar, something that felt as if she had been in this very room once before. She couldn’t shake the feeling of Déjà vu, she walked further into the room looking at everything. Thinking to herself, maybe something would stick out to help give an idea as to where this little girl went. The whole room had a weird yet familiar sense to it. She walked over to the bed, next to it sat a nightstand. The nightstand had a lamp, some hair ties, a doll, and a picture. That’s when she realized why the room looked familiar, the picture was of her as a child swinging on a playground with her mother pushing the swing. Adlee picked up the picture for a closer look at it, the frame wasn’t the same one that she had in her room back home.
A loud noise came from one of the walls behind her, she jumped and turned around dropping the picture frame. Adlee noticed a thin line on the wall behind her, “Is that a secret door?” she thought to herself. Before she went to the door, she picked up the broken picture frame, she noticed that part of the picture had come out of the frame. She turned the frame over and looked at the back of the frame, the picture fell out. There was writing on the back of the picture. Adlee thought to herself: “My beautiful ladies -A” was written on it. “Who is A? And why would they write that on a picture of my mother and me?”.
Adlee placed the picture back on the side table and continued to look around the room. She came across a key hanging by the light switch on the wall, with the key was a tag that said, “unlock me to find your truth”. She took the key from the wall; it was an old skeleton key the kind used in old mansions. She began looking for a keyhole on the walls, she started with the wall the key was hanging on and found nothing. Moving to the wall that she heard the sound come from her heart started to race again. She could feel the anxiety growing within her, the unsteadiness building. There was a large painting on the wall, just inside the edge of the painting was a line on the wall.
This wasn’t just any line, it looked as though it was intentionally covered by the painting like someone tried to hide it from plain sight. Adlee tried to lift the painting off the wall, but she wasn’t strong enough. The painting was the same size as her, she wasn’t little. Adlee stood five foot seven inches and 180 pounds. But this painting was longer than she could wrap her arms around.
“I have to find something to help move this painting,” she told herself. Looking around the room once more, she saw a chair at a desk. She moved the chair right in front of the painting and tried to lift the painting onto the chair. That didn’t work, once again she wasn’t strong enough to lift it. She had to be witty about this to find a way to move it. She was almost certain there was a keyhole behind the painting. Adlee sat in the chair and started thinking. “Maybe if I wedge the back of the chair between the wall and the painting, I could pry the painting forward or....” Adlee thinks out loud as she tries to move the chair between the wall and the painting. She managed to get the chair between the two, but here is where it gets tricky. The painting is so large, how is she going to get the chair to hold it?
“I’ve got it!!” she screamed. She took the chair and tried as hard as she could to turn the chair sideways. Once she got the chair sideways, she sat down in it to make sure it didn’t move. Looking at the wall behind the painting, she realized that not only was there a keyhole... there were three keyholes. “Well fuck, this isn’t going to be easy,” she said out loud. Adlee slowly gets up from the chair in an attempt to have the chair stay in the same place she worked so hard to get there. She starts scouring the room for two other keys, looking on shelves, in books, under the bed... she isn’t finding any of the other two keys.
Just as she is about to give up looking under the bed, seeing something on the leg towards the head of the bed. There is something hanging there, it’s a key but not a skeleton key. This key looks like a safety deposit box key. “Strange, why would the keys be different?” she thought. She reaches for the key, but she couldn’t reach it without going under the bed. Under the bed was full of junk and dust, she shimmied her way under it until she could reach the key. She grabbed the key, but it was stuck, it was wedged or wrapped around the leg of the bed but how was she going to get it unstuck she was too large to fit under the bed anyways and the bed was bolted to the floor.
She huffed and puffed, thinking “should I try to get closer, or should I find something to cut it off?”. Thinking that if she got out from under the bed, she’d be able to get back under it again. She proceeded to shimmy forward, Adlee started getting anxious once again, being so far under the bed gave her feelings of claustrophobia. Adlee stopped in her tracks and started to panic. She couldn’t figure out where to go, which way was up or down left or right. Full panic had set in till someone grabbed her foot and snatched her from under the bed before she could grab the key.
