SCREAM!!!

7. Into the evil maze

The exit didn’t lead to freedom.

Cedric stumbled forward with Gina and Kevin, the silver shimmer of the doorway dissolving behind them like mist. Relief should have washed over him—but instead, his stomach twisted, bile rising at the sudden, unnatural stillness. The cold wind that had been chasing them vanished. The air thickened, humid and choking, carrying a new scent: something rotting, metallic, and sweet, like blood left to ferment.

They were no longer in the labyrinth. The floor beneath them had turned to cracked stone, jagged and uneven. The walls stretched impossibly high, blackened, textured like charred bark. Strange shapes moved just beyond vision—shadows with angles that didn’t make sense, limbs bending the wrong way. The red mist from above had returned, thicker now, curling like a living thing, creeping along the floor toward them with a hiss.

“Where… where are we?” Gina whispered, her voice trembling, barely audible over the pulse in Cedric’s ears. Her eyes darted around the twisted environment, wide and frantic.

“I—I don’t know,” Cedric admitted, his voice hollow. He could barely swallow. The truth pressed down on him like a stone: every twisted thing around him—the stone floor, the blackened walls, the red mist—was born from his drawings. The twisted nightmares he had sketched as a child, the monsters he had drawn to scare himself… they were alive.

Kevin, pale and trembling, pointed to the shadows moving along the walls. “Those… things… they’re watching us. They’re… following us.”

Cedric’s heart pounded. Every instinct screamed run, but where could they go? Every path twisted back on itself, walls bending in ways that made no sense. Nothing obeyed the rules of reality anymore.

A faint whispering began, curling around them. It started soft, almost imperceptible, then grew into a chorus of voices. Some were familiar: friends who had vanished in the first game, calling their names with broken, desperate tones. Some were alien, guttural, hissing and broken.

Cedric covered his ears, but the sound penetrated, vibrating through his skull. Every step they took seemed to amplify the voices, the walls pulsing in response to their fear.

“This is… it’s following our thoughts,” he muttered. His voice sounded small, weak, insignificant.

“They’re… inside our heads,” Gina whispered. Her hands trembled as she gripped his arm, nails digging into his skin. “It knows what we’re thinking.”

And then the first figure appeared.

It emerged from the shadows, crawling along the wall like a spider. Its limbs were too long, bent at unnatural angles, ending in sharp, claw-like fingers. Its face was a horrifying mockery of a human’s: wide, gaping eyes that shone molten orange, teeth jagged and black, lips stretched impossibly into a grin. It hissed Cedric’s name.

“C-Cedric,” he stammered, backing away. His legs stumbled on the jagged stone.

The creature advanced, moving impossibly fast. It crawled along walls, across the floor, its gaze locked on him. The whispers in his head grew louder, voices overlapping, crying, laughing, accusing him. You made this. You brought this here. You are the reason we die.

Gina screamed. Cedric spun toward her—another shadow, identical to the first, lunging at her. He shoved Kevin forward to intercept it. Kevin hit the shadow with a jagged stone from the floor. The creature shattered into black shards, only to reform behind them, unharmed.

Cedric’s hands shook. The air around them shimmered. Shapes coalesced in the mist—tall, thin figures with featureless faces, faceless like the masked men from the first game, reaching for them, fingers stretching through the red haze. Every one of them moved with horrifying synchronization, silent but purposeful.

“They’re… they’re testing us,” Cedric whispered. Panic was a physical weight in his chest, his lungs burning with the effort of breathing. “It wants to see how we react.”

The ground trembled. The red mist thickened, now rising to chest height, curling and snapping at them like snakes. Cedric’s vision blurred. The stone beneath their feet seemed to warp, shifting beneath them, forming small pits that opened suddenly, revealing skeletal hands clawing from below. Students screamed as friends disappeared, their hands dragged into the blackness of the floor, bodies vanishing without a trace.

Cedric grabbed Kevin and Gina, dragging them along a jagged path. Every corner revealed another horror—hallways that bent impossibly, walls that whispered their names, shadows that stalked silently, mimicking their every move.

He could hear Baran’s voice, echoing faintly through the mist, smooth and cruel:

“Survive, Cedric. Only one path leads to life. The rest… feed the nightmare.”

Fear gripped Cedric like iron chains. “There’s… there’s no rules here,” he muttered. “Nothing’s real except the danger.”