As I pushed open the door, a wave of foul odour threatened to engulf us. We all covered our mouths, not daring to take a single breath of the odour. The room was dimly lit, with only a few candles illuminating the space. The walls were covered with mould and mildew, cobwebs hung on every surface. Our eyes widened at the disturbing sight. In dark red letters, the words HELP ME were scrawled on the wall, looking like dried blood.
I heard my heart pounding in my ears, and questions swirling in my head. The room was so empty that the only other things were worn clothes, cans and bottles scattered on the floor. We let the strong and rapid sounds of our heartbeats overtake us, knowing one thing for sure: the person who wrote this didn't make it out alive. The dried blood ran from the wall over the letters to the floor, staining the scuffed shirt with blood.
"What the fuck. What the actual fuck," Adele blurted out expressionlessly. I looked at my siblings, who were all staring around with quivering lips and trembling hands. Our train of thought was interrupted by Yan. "We have to get out of here, and we have to get out now!" Yan fumbled in her pockets for her cell phone. "What are you doing?" Emily stood on tiptoe to glance at her phone. "I'm trying to call the police because we need to get out of here," Yan aggressively tapped her phone, her trembling fingers trying to dial the number. When it rang, we all fell silent and looked at each other. To our horror, the call couldn't go through. "Shit, we have no reception... What are we gonna do?" Yan exclaimed, staring at the floor with her dull eyes in frustration.
Suddenly, a rustling sound came from behind. In eager anticipation, we turned around to find that there was nothing there. I couldn't help but think that maybe we weren't the only ones in the mansion. "Someone died in here, and we might be next. I think we should really get out of here," Emily said, fear written all over her face. "But the door is locked, and we haven't even found a clue to our parents yet," Travis muttered. "We're going to die here, we should have left this to the police. We shouldn't have gone in on our own," Emily hung her head and closed her eyes.
"I hate to say it, but Emily is right, we might actually die here. Did you hear that rustling earlier? Someone could be in the mansion with us right now and just stab us or something," Kiera said in a serious tone, shoulders hunched and fists clenched. The horrible thought that we could die here made my breathing shallow and fast. I struggled to calm myself as I cleared my throat. "Yes, we should get out of here," I said.
"Wait, guys, there's something on the clothes," Travis said, and we took a closer look. We all gasped in horror at the sight. There was a delicate but very familiar locket on the clothes, a portrait of a very familiar woman inside. "This... is... the... our mother's locket..." I stammered, picking up the locket with trembling hands. I stared at the smiling woman in the photo, my mouth agape. My siblings stared silently, their eyes fixed on the photo. The eeriness of the room enveloped us, and our imaginations ran wild. What if the person who had written "HELP ME" was actually our mother?
I looked at my siblings and noticed tears running down their cheeks. While they were crying softly, I touched my own face and noticed that it was moist and hot. Tears were already running down my cheeks as well. We didn't care at all what was happening around us, but at that moment all we could do was sulk and let our feelings overwhelm us.
The feelings of despair enveloped us as we struggled to maintain our composure in the face of such an overwhelming discovery.
