I nodded as I stood up from the ground. I wiped the dirt off my shorts as I got rid of the drawing on the ground with my foot. "Sure, why not?"
"You guys are the best!" Paxton exclaimed before giving each one of us a high five.
Javier had a grin painted on his face too. He was just as surprised as I was at my offer. I didn't know what came over me, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. Sure, a couple of months ago I would have minded, but I felt a bit different about him now. I wouldn’t admit that to anyone, though.
After another twenty minutes it was finally our turn to go into the haunted mansion. I walked inside with no worries at all, just hope that it would be as realistic as possible.
I was stealing glances at everyone because I wanted to see who was genuinely scared and who wasn't. Bella was overly excited, so much so that she couldn't stop herself from bouncing as she walked. Kailey, Paxton, and Javi looked ready but not without a sprinkle of apprehension.
I was surprised by how Ricky looked. He was fine while we were waiting in line, but now he looked like he was about to shit his pants. I wouldn’t have expected that because he was the same Ricky that loved horror movies. Haunted houses and movies were practically the same thing.
"You seem scared,” I whispered with an accidental bump into his shoulder. It was getting darker as we walked down a long corridor, the light behind us fading as we continued onward. "It's just like watching a horror movie, but up close."
Ricky humphed. "Those are nowhere near the same."
The dark corridor was going on for what felt like forever. The sound of the impatient people chattering while waiting in line had ceased and the faint light from outside was completely gone. The only thing to be heard was the sound of our footsteps. If wesquinted our eyes hard enough we could see the outline of the person next to us. That was how dark it was.
We finally entered the first room. It was a nursery that seemed to have been left untouched for many years. It was dark, the only source of light was a tiny lamp on the nightstand. The crib was broken and rusted, the paint on the walls were chipped, and there was an eerie nursery rhyme playing faintly in the background. There was no baby in the crib, I checked. It was just a baby's room. Who could be afraid of that?
Apparently the people I was with could. They were walking extremely slow because they were afraid of something jumping out at them. Everyone was hyper-aware of their surroundings. Even Justin, which was funny because just a couple of minutes ago he was hellbent on trying to prove that he wouldn't be more scared than I would be.
"C'mon guys, let's get to the next room," I said impatiently. There was no point in lingering in an empty room.
I walked to the doorway, everyone else still lacking behind me. I walked through it without a second thought and it led to another small, dark hallway. I took the lead and made my way down it, but I stumbled backward when a figure appeared from the shadows. After the initial shock wore off, I realized that it was simply a child. The child ran up as close to me as she possibly could without touching me before she ran back into the darkness. I wouldn’t lie and say that I didn't jump a little from the sudden appearance of the tiny child with blood smeared all over her face, but it wasn’t bad at all.
That was how the rest of the haunted house went. We walked through an ancient tomb, a pirate ship, a forest, and many more places that were supposed to be eerie and I still wasn't scared. But even though I wasn’t scared, I was having fun.
Halfway through we unintentionally grouped into pairs. Ricky and Kailey, Bella and Paxton, and Javier and me. I hadn'tnoticed it at first, but when I felt someone's arm brush against mine I started to pay more attention. It was Javi’s arm that kept touching mine and that was because of how close together we were as we walked. He noticed this as well and tried to keep his distance, but he wasn’t doing a great job at it.
In one of the rooms there was a statue. It was a short green statue, but it looked old and dirty. It reminded me of a goblin. Javier inspected it with fascination. Quickly, he found out that the statue was not actually a statue when it jumped toward him. My body jolted when I heard him scream. I had never seen him scared before.
He was so scared that his arms suddenly wrapped around me. Granted, I was the closest person to him and he needed someone to grab onto, but still. He huggedme.
I froze when his arms squeezed me tightly, I was too stunned to do anything else. After he realized what he was doing, he let go of me and took a step back. He looked at me with anticipation, probably because he was expecting me to lash out at him. I didn't though, I was too busy trying to stop the heat rising on my cheeks.
After thirty minutes of cheap scare tactics, we finally reached the end of the haunted mansion. Once we got through the exit I continued to walk forward, but everyone else had a different idea. They stopped to chat at the exit door. I sighed as I turned around to face them.
"That was so cool!" Paxton roared. "When the dead girl was hanging from the ceiling, I was fucking horrified!"
"I think the best part was when the guy fell through the floor!" Bella said, reminiscing on the scene happily.
I listened to the conversation without adding anything of my own. I was just happy that we didn't see any clowns. Clowns were such an overused character in everything Halloween related. Besides, they gave me the creeps.
My attention was brought back to the group when the conversation had suddenly ended. They were all looking at me oddly and it concerned me.
"What?" I asked hastily. That was when I realized that they weren't just staring at me, they were also looking at something behind me.
Me being the idiot that I was, I turned around in an instant. I should have kept my back toward it because then I wouldn’t have had to deal with it. Standing before me was a freakishly tall clown holding a running chainsaw. In other words, a giant fucking clown was two feet away, hovering over me holding a real chainsaw that could cut me into tiny pieces.
All rational thoughts went out the window. Fight or flight? I chose flight. My feet started moving before my brain could process the action. I ran away from the murderous clown all the way to the front of the haunted house back to where the two-hour long line was. It chased me the entire way and I knew this not because I was looking, but because I could hear the sound of the chainsaw keeping up with me. I heard somebody's voice calling for me, but the only thing on my mind was how I was about to turn into shredded cheese if I stopped running.
I was running in circles and it was still following me. My feet didn’t stop until I ran into something— no, someone. It was a someone because a something wouldn't have wrapped its arms around me as it stumbled back from the impact of me crashing into it full force.
I held onto the someone for a few more seconds, feeling surprisingly comforted and warm in their embrace. I felt safe, a feeling I didn't have the pleasure of experiencing often. Their clothes smelled nice too, it was a scent that I had been smelling more and more often. It was a clean smell, vanilla, natural—hold on.
I pushed myself off of him and refused to make any sort of eye contact with anyone. "Is the clown still behind me?"
"Not anymore," Javier’s deep voice rang in my ears as my embarrassment rose.
