When Ander and I returned to the dining room, we had only one canopic jar with us. We had decided to leave Wendy’s—or rather, Fake Wendy’s—behind, for a multitude of reasons.
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Although it’s unlikely that Wendy is responsible for the death of Ander’s father (and perhaps of Regis himself), she could still be in league with the responsible party, and exposing her could spell death for those of us left .f
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If Fake Wendy didn’t know that we were on to her, we were free to observe her with little suspicion.
Few things had changed in the dining room since we had left it. Forrest’s bonds were still hanging loose and empty on the chair at the head of the table. William and Fake Wendy were standing around the wooden structure, their piteous gazes on Greta. The older woman’s head was in her hands, the photograph of the corn husk doll, the creased piece of paper, and the still closed envelope sitting in front of her.
We entered without a word, and as the three looked up at us, Ander solemnly motioned to the jar in his hands, which bore his photo. I watched Fake Wendy’s eyes for any sort of recognition, but couldn’t catch anything.
“We can do it at the same time, if you’d like,” Ander said to Greta, and I was surprised at the sudden kindness in his voice. The older woman hesitated, then shook her head, her eyes glazed over in not-yet-fallen tears.
“I’d rather go first. Just get it over with.” Ander nodded, seeming a bit relieved. “But we can do our… punishments at the same time, if you don’t mind.” She looked hopefully up at Ander, who reluctantly grimaced.
“Sounds like a plan,” he said in a low voice.
He walked around to the other side of the table, and took the seat across from Greta.
Once he sat, Greta picked up her folded piece of paper, and began to read in a trembling voice:
Greta McIntyre,
Confess your sins.
After your confession, open the envelope.
Accept your punishment.
Greta put down the paper, and replaced it in her grasp with the photograph. I could see over her shoulder the image of the cornhusk doll in the dirt, it’s crude red-smudge smile sending shivers down my back.
“Before I worked for Mr. Hannigan, I had a difficult life. I was twenty, with no parents and no prospects. I lived on the street for a time. It was hard,” she said this all coldly and methodically, as though distancing herself from the emotion of her past as much as she could. She swallowed. “Until I got a job at a Children’s Home.”
Her finger traced the outline of the doll. “It was wonderful work. I really do love children. I cooked and cleaned, and read to the little one’s before bed. But that didn’t mean that all of my problems had disappeared. I had debts, and they needed to be paid.”
“It was easy to steal from the Home. They had so much trust, you see. And after working there for a few years, I was treated like family. No one was watching when I skimmed off the top of the donations. No one except Jeremy.”
Her hands were shaking harder now, her eyes transfixed on the doll. “He had been my favorite. I had taught him to make corn husk dolls, and then he would teach the others. He wanted to help the other kids so much, I don’t think he realized he was as bad off as any of them. So when he caught me stealing money, he wanted to do the right thing. He wanted to tell the other staff.”
“I convinced him to wait. I told him that I would tell them myself, that he shouldn’t worry himself with such adult matters. And he believed me, because he trusted me. But I knew he wasn’t going to just let it go.”
A few tears made their way over her waterline and down her weathered cheek. “I lured him out to the woods. I told him if we gathered enough twigs, I could teach him how to make another kind of doll, one he could show the others.”
“The Children’s Home had an accident, a few years back. A little girl wandered away from the building and into the woods, and had drowned in the lake in the center. So, I led Jeremy to the bank of the lake and…”
She raised her hands up in front of her eyes, as though unable to accept them as a part of her body. She took a shaky breath, her words broken at the end by a sob.
“I strangled him.”
That same sick feeling came back to my gut, but I fought it back down. Even though Greta’s story was terrifying to hear, I was trying to keep my eye on Fake Wendy. But her face betrayed nothing, save the same horror and disgust that the other’s faces, and my own, reflected.
“I rolled his little body into the water and then I just… I just left him.” Greta was weeping steadily now, her breath coming in short huffs and her voice growing thick. “I waited a bit, after they found his body and decided he had drowned, just like the little girl had. Then, I quit the Children’s Home, and found work with Mr. Hannigan.”
She looked again to the paper in her hands, this time with incredulity. “I had gotten away with it, and I never told anyone what had happened. How could they have known…” It was a question that all of us had, but none could answer.
There was a moment of silence. Then, William spoke. “And the envelope?”
Her hands reached for the scarlet paper, peeling it open with long fingernails. She turned it upside down, shook it slightly, and two things fell out. One, the piece of paper, with the cryptic instructions for her punishment. Two, a small white pill.
Greta read the paper first:
No blow as strong as a betrayal of trust,
The strength of which may take your breath away
William leaned over, peering skeptically at the pill in her hand. Then his eyes widened, and he pulled away quickly. “Strychnine,” he said quietly.
“Rat poison?” Ander said with shock.
“How is that a punishment,” Fake Wendy asked, “Won’t that just kill her?” I took a mental note of this comment, though I had no idea if it was significant or not.
“Not necessarily,” William answered slowly. “A small enough dose might not be lethal. Still the effects are going to be… unpleasant. Asphyxiation, for one.” He reached out his hand and lay it gently on Greta’s shoulder. The woman, however, pulled away.
“I’ve been running from this for decades. I deserve this.” She stared at the pill in her palm, then looked up. “Your turn,” she said grimly to Ander.
Ander paled even deeper. He looked at the jar in his hands, then raised his eyebrows and shifted his gaze to William. “There’s a dog on mine. Does that mean there’s a puppy in this one?” He let out a nervous laugh, but William didn’t crack a smile.
“That’s Duamatef, the jackal.” He paused. “It holds the stomach.”
Ander’s smile dropped. His hands moved to remove the lid, which came out with a pop. Then, holding his face out of the path of the wretched odor that now drifted from the opening, he stuck his arm inside the jar.
The squelching sound of Ander’s arm against the long-dead flesh within the jar was sickening. He felt around for a few moments, his eyes shut tightly. The scarlet stood out stark against his sallow skin. Then, as more time passed, and he didn’t bring his arm back out, he opened his eyes, and frowned.
“Uh… I’m not feeling anything.”
I felt a brief sense of relief drift back into my body. “Are you sure?” William asked.
“Reach all the way down to the bottom, maybe it sunk,” Wendy said. I took another note of this—it was as though she knew how the contents of the jars tended to behave. Like maybe she was the one who had planted the clues in them to begin with.
Ander stuck his arm in even farther, then pulled it out, the suction of it making a loud slurp sound, but he didn’t even flinch. “I’m telling you, there’s nothing in this one.”
There was a moment of silence. Then, suddenly, the tension in the room broke.
Greta got up from her seat at the table, no longer crying. “Here, let me try,” she said, and without a moment’s hesitation, stuck her arm into Ander’s jar. After a few moments of feeling around, she pulled it out, her hand empty. “He’s right, there’s nothing,” she said matter-of-factly, looking at William.
“Well shit,” William said, his scholarly air suddenly dropping. He rubbed his temples with his fingertips. Then, he suddenly looked to me. “I’m so sorry about this, this never happens.”
I blinked. “What?”
“You know, it’s a lot of props to get in order,” Ander said, gesturing with his hands as he spoke, one white, one red. “Makes sense that some of them get lost.”
“Did you just say props—” I started to ask, before I was interrupted. A familiar face had just entered in the room, a face I had hoped not to see again. I recoiled, stepping backwards until my leg hit hard against the chair behind me.
“Is someone going to give me my cue?” Forrest said impatiently, reentering the dining room. His face was still bloodied, and there were rope marks around his wrists. But, other than that, he looked normal. His one remaining eye wasn’t bulging, his mouth wasn’t foaming—
What was going on?
“Sorry, the jars empty,” Fake Wendy said, and Forrest groaned.
“Ugh, that sucks. I felt like we had such a good rhythm going.”
William let out a heavy sigh. “I’ll go make the call. See if they can get the stuff out to us in time and we can pick up where we left off.” He patted me on the shoulder lightly. “Again, really sorry about this.” Then, he left the room.
We stood in silence for a few moments. I looked to Ander, the one person out of the entire group that I had grown to ever-so-slightly trust. “I’m sorry,” I started, “what exactly is going on here?”
“Props guy messed up, forgot the stuff in my jar,” Ander said simply.
“No, I mean like… what are we doing here? Are we not—Is this not—” I took a deep breath, feeling scared and stupid at the same time. I didn’t know how to phrase the question.
Fake Wendy, Greta, Forrest, and Ander all stared at me in mild confusion. Then, one by one, realization rose to their faces.
“You do know this is fake, right?”
My mind was reeling. “W-what?”
“Oh my god,” Ander said with a disbelieving laugh. “You think this is real? Seriously? A mummy-themed horror puzzle?”
“Don’t be rude man, he’s really freaked out,” Fake Wendy said, looking at me with pity.
“You mean you didn’t sign up for this? Didn’t sign the waivers or anything?” Greta asked, her cold demeanor dropped as she spoke to me with concern. I only shook my head. “Well, someone did it for you, I suppose. What a nasty prank.”
“Oh wow,” Ander said, all humor gone from his face. “I thought you were just really into the story. Or that you had some serious acting chops.”
“You’re telling me,” Forrest said, gingerly pressing his fingertips to his face. “He gave me a pretty sizable cut. It was tough to put on the prosthetics in between scenes.”
Then, he stuck his fingers underneath the wound across his face, and slowly and deliberately peeled it away. Beneath was healthy skin, a working eye, and a small band-aid above his eyebrow.
Panic seized me. “Someone tell me what this is, right now.”
Ander stood up from his seat at the table, and walked until he was in front of me. He reached out a lanky arm, the one that wasn’t coated in red, and placed it on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry Sam, we thought you knew.” He paused.
“You are the one and only participant in Regus Hannigan’s Immersive Murder Mystery Experience.”
---
Credits
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