Bachelorette Party
After taking the train into the city, the women, looking forward to the festivities, walked from the station to the hotel and checked into their rooms. Cheryl Budd, who organized the overnight event, presented the bridal party with matching T-shirts. Hers read MAID OF HONOR, and Athena Proffitt's identified her as THE BRIDE. Four other women were given BRIDESMAID shirts: Maeve Winsford, Athena's married sister who had flown in from London to celebrate the nuptials; Greta Mulholland, the bride's former college roommate who drove down from Boston; Morgan Reece, the groom's sister who was studying filmmaking at UCLA; and Nicolette Hillary, a neighbor who had introduced Athena to Chadwick Reece three years earlier. In addition to the members of the bridal party, there were more than a dozen female cousins, friends, neighbors and coworkers, all of whom were eager to help the soon-to-be Mrs. Reece enjoy one of her last evenings as a single woman.
Even though the hotel had given them a break on reserving multiple rooms, many of the women chose to share. Cheryl and Athena, who had been close friends since kindergarten, bunked together. After putting on her T-shirt and a plastic headband with a short, white veil attached, the bride was ready to venture out into the night.
"I can't wait to eat. I'm starving!" she exclaimed. "I didn't have any breakfast or lunch today."
"You'd better eat something, then," her friend warned. "You don't want to drink on an empty stomach."
"I shouldn't drink at all. I don't want to gain a single ounce. I have to fit into that wedding gown next week."
"Now you tell me! I made reservations at that Chinese buffet you like so much."
Visions of her favorite dishes flickered in Athena's mind: sweet and sour shrimp, beef and broccoli, hot and sour soup, crab Rangoon and General Tso's chicken.
"Well, maybe I can live on vitamins and water for the next five days," she said, as she vividly recalled the taste of the restaurant's peanut chicken.
When they arrived at the Chinese Lantern, the women sat at a long table that had been reserved for them. Naturally, the bride sat at the head of the table. Her maid of honor sat by her side.
"What have you got planned for this evening?" asked Athena, who had been kept in the dark about the bachelorette party.
"It's a secret. You'll have to wait and see."
Finally, after each woman had gone back to the buffet two or three times, the server brought the bill and a tray of fortune cookies. Cheryl handed one to the bride before taking her own and passing the tray to Maeve who was seated on her left. Athena broke the cookie in half but found no slip of paper inside.
"I've been gypped!" she laughed. "There's no fortune in mine."
"Uh-oh!" Cheryl teased. "Does that mean you have no future?"
"If I were a superstitious, I'd be shaking in my boots right now."
"But you're not," Morgan said. "You're one of the most intelligent women I know, and you'll no doubt chalk the empty fortune cookie up to poor quality control at the factory."
After Cheryl paid the bill and left a generous tip for the server, who did little more than fill their teapot and take away their dirty plates, the celebrants left the restaurant.
"Where to now?" Nicolette asked since not even the bridesmaids knew about the plans for the evening.
"I wanna get drunk and sing karaoke," Greta suggested. "I haven't done that since college."
"That's what they wind up doing at most bachelorette parties," Morgan said.
"In London, they would call it a hen party," explained Maeve, who had lived in England for the past seven years.
"Well, whatever you want to call this little get-together, we don't want it to be dull. Do we, ladies? We want to do something different," Cheryl declared.
A chorus of women voiced their agreement.
"But I like karaoke," complained the bride, the only one who agreed with Greta.
"There'll be time for drinking and singing afterward," her maid of honor promised.
"After what?"
"You'll see. Just follow me."
As they headed east, Maeve, Morgan and Greta began singing the Cyndi Lauper classic, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun.'" By the time they reached the end of the block, all the women had joined in.
* * *
"How far is this place?" Greta asked after walking for more than a mile and a half.
"It's only about three more blocks," Cheryl replied. "I'd have hailed a cab, but we wouldn't all fit inside."
Athena was the first person to see the sign up ahead.
"Escape rooms," she read. "Really? I've always wanted to do an escape room!"
"I know," her maid of honor said. "That's why I chose this place."
Jamie Reece, Chadwick's young cousin from Pennsylvania, who was not nearly as brave as the bride, frowned.
"We don't all have to go inside, do we?"
"Don't worry," Cheryl assured her. "Not every room is horror-themed. There's one where all you need to do is solve clues to unlock a pirate's treasure chest."
"Come on, Jamie," Morgan urged her cousin. "It might be fun!"
When the group of women entered the lobby, Francisco Calderón, the manager, stepped forward to greet them.
"Welcome, ladies."
"I'm Cheryl Budd," the maid of honor introduced herself. "We spoke on the phone about my friend's bachelorette party."
A smile appeared on Francisco's face and he answered, "Yes. I have everything ready for you."
"Good."
The manager then asked the group, "Have any of you ever done an escape room?"
No one had.
"Briefly, as you can see from the posters on the wall, we have eight rooms to choose from. They range in difficulty from easy to expert. Seven of the rooms will accommodate up to six players each. The eighth room is for single players only. Once you choose a room, you will be locked inside. There are clues located in each room that will eventually provide you with the combination to the lock on the door. You will have one hour to find and solve all the clues. If you are unable to do so, I will unlock the door and let you out at that time. Is that clear?"
"What if we want to leave before the hour is up?" Greta asked.
"In case of an emergency, just press the intercom button next to the door, and you can speak to me."
Ten minutes later, the women divided themselves into small groups.
"Whoever wants to escape from Alcatraz please follow me," Francisco announced and led Greta and four other women to the prison-themed escape room.
The inside was designed to look like a jail cell complete with bars. There was graffiti on the walls, which Nicolette was sure held a clue.
"The books on that small shelf must be there for a reason," one of Athena's coworkers surmised. "And the calendar on the wall, too."
"Very good observation! You ought to do well," Francisco declared before closing and locking the door.
The next group, which included Jamie and Morgan Reece, was led to the Treasure Island room where they would have to hunt for Blackbeard's treasure. It was the most popular room for both children's birthday parties and the faint of heart. Only three women wanted to enter the Mad Scientist's Laboratory, while Maeve and four others chose to escape Jack the Ripper. The most popular room, with six guests attending, was the Zombie Apocalypse. The least popular, with only two players, was the Toxic Waste room.
Cheryl, Athena and three other women were left in the lobby. The bride assumed they would all enter the Haunted Hotel. The maid of honor, however, challenged her friend to take on the eighth room: Escape the Fear.
"But I'd have to go in by myself," the bride argued.
"So? Don't tell me you're afraid! You're the girl who drove all the way to Pennsylvania so you could see the Halloween attractions at Eastern State Penitentiary, Bates Motel, Pennhurst Asylum, Jason's Woods and the Waldorf Estate of Fear. Last year, you spent an entire week in Salem at its annual Haunted Happenings. And how many ghost tours have you been on? Let's see. There was the one in Gettysburg, Newport, London, Dublin, Edinburgh ...."
"But I was never alone when I did those things."
"I'd go in with you if I could, but it's the policy here that only one player can enter that room at a time. And if you manage to escape before the hour is up, you get a free T-shirt."
"The last thing I need is another T-shirt!" Athena groaned. "I've already got a closet full of them."
"Well, if you're too chicken to do it ...."
It was a dare, one the bride could not resist.
"I didn't say that."
"Well, you better make up your mind," Cheryl advised. "Here comes Francisco."
"And now, we head to the Haunted Hotel. I must warn you that we've had three guests check in during the last year, and they have yet to check out."
Athena followed the four remaining women, but at the door of their escape room, she hesitated.
"Are you coming in?" her maid of honor asked, "or are you going to conquer your fear?"
Francisco looked from one woman to the other.
"Can't you make an exception this time and let us both into that room?" Athena asked.
"No. I can't. I'm sorry, but rules are rules."
I can do this, the bride thought, trying to summon her courage. How bad can it be? And it's only for one hour. If it's too frightening, I can close my eyes and think happy thoughts until Francisco opens the door and lets me out.
"All right," she finally announced. "I'll do it."
"Hold on," Cheryl said as Francisco was about to lock the door to the Haunted Hotel. "First, I want to get a picture of my friend going into that room."
* * *
In their Alcatraz prison cell, Greta and Nicolette unlocked a footlocker they discovered beneath the prison bunk by using a date that was circled in red on the 1934 wall calendar.
"What's inside it?" Greta asked as her fellow player removed the combination barrel lock and lifted the lid.
"Letters and postcards. Here, let's look through them for more clues," Nicolette answered, sharing them with the other women.
As the five players in the Escape from Alcatraz room were reading through an unknown inmate's mail, Francisco closed and locked the door behind Athena.
"This isn't so bad," she said, looking around the room that was roughly the size of the living room in her apartment. "In fact, it's not frightening at all!"
On one wall were dozens of posters advertising horror movies, ranging from the 1931 classic Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff, to the 2022 version of Scream.
"I'm sure I can find clues in the movie titles, but there are so many of them! Where should I start?"
The second wall featured a large built-in bookcase. Several hundred novels were crammed onto its shelves. Prominent among the authors were Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker, Anne Rice and Peter Straub. There were also classic works by Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker. The bride selected a book at random, A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson, and thumbed through its pages.
"I saw the movie of this, starring Kevin Bacon."
Again, she was sure there were clues to be found among the books. But with so many of them, where was she to start looking?
Maybe I should have gone in search of Blackbeard's treasure instead, she mused, feeling overwhelmed by the task at hand.
Meanwhile, the three players in the Treasure Island room were just as baffled as the bride was.
"I don't see how little kids can solve clues and unlock the door to this room when three grown women can't!" Cecelia Reece, the groom's mother, exclaimed.
"You're in college," Jamie teased Morgan. "Can't you make heads or tails out of this old map?"
"Sorry," the film student laughed. "They don't teach cryptology at UCLA."
The three women in the Escape the Mad Scientist's Laboratory were making better progress. One of the players had examined the scientist's lab coat that hung on a metal hook by the door and discovered a clue on his ID card. Her teammate, who had excellent recall of high school chemistry, found a second clue among the labels of bottles on a shelf. The third player then managed to unlock one of the scientist's desk drawers and found the password to his computer.
Clocks, located directly above the doors in each of the rooms, reminded players that they were working under a deadline.
"Do we win anything if we get out of here before the hour is up?" Leonora Halpin, Chadwick's administrative assistant wondered.
"I doubt it," one of her teammates replied.
"I'll be satisfied to just get out of here so that we can all go the bar for a drink!" the third woman laughed.
* * *
Maeve and Nicolette were in a dim room made to look like an alleyway in Whitechapel circa 1888. As in the other rooms, there were physical props in addition to writing on the walls.
"Look, I found a letter," Maeve announced. "It begins 'Dear Boss.'"
"Just like the one the killer was supposed to have written," Nicolette said.
The bride's sister read through the letter but found no clues.
"I must be missing something. Here, you read it."
As Nicolette perused the letter, Maeve rifled through a Victorian-era woman's purse and found a handful of old British coins.
To the right of the Jack the Ripper room, six players were scanning old newspapers for clues to help them escape the Zombie Apocalypse. To the left, two women were reading reports issued by the Environmental Protection Agency concerning toxic waste.
"I found a list of dump sites," Sue Proffitt, the bride's mother, announced.
Meanwhile, in the Escape the Haunted Hotel room, players were examining the check-in register, paying close attention to guests' names and room numbers.
"Look at this," Paris Childs, who carpooled to work with Athena, laughed. "Jack Torrance is staying in Room 237."
"And you think that's a clue?" asked a player who apparently was not up on her Stephen King trivia.
"It's from The Shining. Jack Torrance was the caretaker at the Overlook Hotel, and Room 237 was haunted."
While the women in the other rooms continued searching for clues, the bride moved from the bookshelf to a curio cabinet displaying action figures and dolls. In addition to the old favorites (Frankenstein's Monster and his bride, the Wolfman, Dracula and the Creature from the Black Lagoon), there were figures of modern killers such as Michael Myers, Ghostface, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and Leatherface.
I bet some of the stuff in this room would be worth money on eBay, she supposed. But what clues can there be on action figures?
There were no words or numbers written on them, and there seemed to be no special significance in the way they were arranged in the cabinet.
"I wish Chad were here," she whined. "He's much better at figuring out puzzles than I am."
As Athena stood in the center of the room, glancing from the movie posters to the bookcase to the cabinet, her frustration mounted. She did not have the faintest idea where to begin. She looked at the lock on the door. Directly to the right of it was an intercom button. Since employees at escape rooms often provided helpful clues when players were stumped, she pressed the button.
"Francisco," she spoke into the intercom. "I don't know where to begin."
There was no answer.
I don't know why I ever wanted to do an escape room in the first place! I thought it would be fun, but instead, it's like studying for a final exam.
And the clock above the door kept ticking, a reminder that time was passing.
* * *
"It's been fifteen minutes already," Athena said despondently. "One-fourth of the time allotted, and I haven't found a single clue yet."
She walked to the wall of movie posters and read the words printed on them. Other than brief reviews, she found nothing but the names of stars, supporting actors, producers, directors and screenwriters.
"Who cares if John A. Russo wrote the screenplay for Night of the Living Dead and Marie Torre of KDKA TV in Pittsburg described it as being 'more terrifying than Hitchcock's Psycho'? Nothing here is going to help me unlock that door."
That was just one movie poster, but all the others contained much the same information. After unsuccessfully trying to speak to Francisco Calderón via the intercom again, she moved on to the bookcase.
"Surely no one is expected to look through all these books in one hour!"
Still, she took down a volume from the middle of the case—The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty—and scanned the pages, hoping to find highlighting or underlining of the key text. Her search yielded no clues, so she tossed the paperback onto the floor and took down Jay Anson's The Amityville Horror. Again, she found nothing out of the ordinary, not even a dog-eared page. Soon Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Toni Morrison's Beloved and Stephen King's Needful Things joined the growing pile of books on the floor.
Athena was opening the cover of a well-worn copy of Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby when she heard the smoke detector in the hall go off.
"Christ!" she cried upon hearing the piercing sound. "That scared me half to death!"
Still holding on to the satanic tale of Rosemary Woodhouse, she went to the door and tried pushing the intercom button again.
"Francisco! What's up with the smoke detector? Is anything wrong?"
No answer.
"Hello? Can anyone hear me?"
There was continued silence from the intercom. Could it be broken?
"Francisco? Anyone? If you can hear me, I want to be let out of this room."
She waited at the door for someone to arrive, giving up all attempts to look for clues. Above her head, the thin, red second hand of the clock continued its journey, passing the slower-moving minute and hour hands every sixty seconds.
"Damn it!" she swore and tossed Rosemary's Baby across the room, knocking over the action figures of Tim Curry's version of Pennywise, Captain Spaulding, Jigsaw and Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera.
"I suppose I'll just remain here until the hour is up and ...."
An unpleasant odor suddenly challenged her White Diamonds perfume for dominance. She sniffed.
"What's that burning smell?"
The bride looked down and saw a whisp of smoke make its way into the room from beneath the door. Her scream momentarily shut out the jarring noise of the smoke detector. Then, a new sound joined the dissonance: a fire alarm.
"Oh my god!" she cried. "The building is on fire, and I'm locked in this room!"
* * *
Athena who had not been inside a church since her sister's wedding, clasped her hands and prayed. After ending with a heartfelt amen, she pressed the intercom button again.
"Please! Somebody help me! This is an emergency!"
Fearing the intercom was broken, she balled up her hands into fists and pounded on the door.
"HELP!" she yelled again and again.
The terrified woman looked around the room for something that she could use to pry open the door. There were several hardcover books on the shelf, but none of the thick cardboard covers could fit between the door and the jamb. Her eyes then went to the curio cabinet. Michael Myers' knife and Jason Voorhees' axe wouldn't do because they were made of cheap plastic that bent easily. In desperation, she clawed at the door, breaking several of her fingernails while attempting to open it.
As the smoke grew thicker, she looked down at the combination barrel lock. The correct sequence of four digits would unlock it and allow her to open the door. She quickly did the math: ten possible digits in each of the four positions meant there were 104 or 10,000 possibilities.
"It would take me hours to try all of them."
But what choice did she have? Besides, maybe she would get lucky and the correct combination would begin with two zeroes. She pulled her T-shirt up over her nose and mouth to lessen the danger of inhaling smoke, set the dials to 0000 and tugged on the lock. When it failed to open, she turned the fourth dial to 1 and tried again. Another failure. By the time the dials read 0054, Athena could hear what sounded like heavy rain pouring down on the building.
"Thank God! The firemen are here to put out the fire!"
Ignoring the lock, she again pounded on the door with her fists, all the while screaming for help.
"I'm locked inside here!" she cried, her throat sore and her voice already sounding hoarse. "Someone please get me out. I'm locked ...."
The lights flickered.
"Oh, no!"
There were no windows in the room. If the lights went out, she would be in total darkness.
"HELP ME!"
Suddenly, she could hear women screaming.
"Dear God, please don't let any harm come to my family and friends."
Her eyes began to tear from the smoke. She wiped them with her left hand but continued to pound on the door with her right. At that moment, the lights went out. She fell to her knees and tearfully prayed for herself and the other women who had come together to celebrate her impending wedding.
Her panic worsened when she heard a man's voice shout, "It's hopeless. The roof is gonna collapse any moment. Everybody out!"
* * *
Cheryl smiled as she tugged on the final lock and opened the door.
"We did it! We escaped the Haunted Hotel," she proudly boasted.
The maid of honor and her teammates joined the other women in the lobby.
"How did you all do?" she asked.
"I'm afraid we couldn't escape Alcatraz," Greta replied.
"Well, they did claim it was an escape-proof prison," Nicolette added. "So, we shouldn't feel too bad."
Jamie, Morgan and Cecelia, on the other hand, had successfully opened Blackbeard's treasure chest and found the correct combination to their door lock. The three women in the Mad Scientist's Laboratory and the Escape Toxic Waste room also made it out before their hour was up. Unfortunately, the players who attempted to flee from Jack the Ripper and the Zombie Apocalypse failed in their missions.
"Where's my daughter?" Sue asked.
"She decided to go into the challenge room by herself. Francisco is going to unlock her door now," Cheryl answered. "Come on, let's all get a picture of her when he opens it."
Several women, their cell phones ready to take photos, gathered around the door, which could be unlocked from the outside by using a key. When it opened, the lights came on to reveal the bride, lying on the floor, curled up in a fetal position.
"Time's up," Francisco announced.
"The game's over," the maid of honor laughed. "Let's go get drunk now."
"Athena?" Sue called. "Are you okay?"
When her daughter did not respond, she went into the room. Although the computer-generated sound effects had been turned off, the stench from the smoke machine still hung in the air.
"What's wrong with her?" Maeve asked.
"I don't know. It's as though she doesn't know we're here."
"You don't think this is all because of the escape room, do you?" Cheryl asked.
The maid of honor joined Maeve and Sue at the bride's side.
"None of it was real," she told the unresponsive woman. "You were never in any danger. You were only meant to believe the building was on fire because it was the scenario of the Escape the Fear room."
But Athena did not hear her Cheryl's explanation. Her mind was now and would remain locked away in a dark, smoky, terror-filled world from which there was no escape—not in an hour and not ever.
I was inspired to write this story when a nearby strip mall burned to the ground in June 2023. Newspaper accounts claimed the fire was called in when a person saw flames in back of the Trap Door escape rooms. It occurred to my warped imagination to wonder what would happen if someone were locked inside one of the rooms when the building caught on fire. (Luckily, the fire occurred early on a Sunday morning when most of the businesses were closed.)
Salem once made his own escape room out of an empty beer box he found on the neighbor's trash pile. (Just my luck he managed to get out of it!)
