NOTE: THIS IS NOT A GAME. This is a story I wrote. The audio book is not out yet. Soon it will be. For now, enjoy the story!
It’s halloween night and Jack, Ethan, Braxtyn, Sean, and I are all tired of trick-or-treating. We decided to go to Ethan’s house and go to the forest close to his neighborhood that is rumored to be haunted on Halloween night. When we got to Ethan’s house, we started talking about what we were going to do and started to put together our survival pack. Because Ethan and Jack are allowed to hunt, we brought some guns. Ethan said that this could be kind of like The Blair Witch Project, which is a movie I have heard about. In the movie, three guys get lost in the forest, but they die in the end. Ethan also made a book series based off The Blair Witch Project, with three parts. The characters still die in the end.
I told Ethan, “There is no way we could get lost. I mean, we have essentials like a map and a compass. They work.”
At 7:15, it was time to go to the forest. “Alright, let’s do this!” we all said.
“I’m gonna record this. It will make a great YouTube video for the books!” Ethan said.
“Cool! Can I help edit it?” I asked since I was good at editing videos.
“Of course!” Ethan replied.
“I think we should go now,” Jack said.
“Okay,” we agreed.
We followed the map to the forest while Braxtyn held the flashlight. Thankfully, we were able to successfully navigate using the map and compass. For a while, we played this game called Haunted Forest Tag, where one person is the “killer” and he must tag the other players. When a player is tagged, the must fall on the ground. When there was one player and the killer left, the killer must yell “SUDDEN DEATH!” and start to fake- fight. While they fight, anyone can get up and watch the duel. Whoever wins the battle wins.
Sean was the first killer. It was a long round. When Jack was running, he tripped over a rock and scraped his leg. It was a pretty bad scrape, so we bandaged the cut. However, Braxtyn checked the rock and found scratches on it weren’t from Jack’s hit. On the other hand, it might have been from Jack’s hit, because the rock suddenly crumbled. That really spooked me. All of a sudden, we realized that we were in a corn maze. I don’t know how it happened (it might’ve been from when we were playing our game), but we were lost. There wasn’t a corn maze in the map. Wait, I thought, I know a trick!
“Follow me, and I can get us out of here,” I said to them. Here’s the trick: just stay on the left, and keep turning to the left. Eventually, we were out of the corn maze. We were all relieved.
“Max, you’re a genius!” Braxtyn said. I thanked him.
We were back at the forest, so we decided to continue playing Haunted Forest Tag. This time, the last survivor was Ethan and he won the duel. When we were choosing the next killer, we heard footsteps. They were getting louder. And louder. And louder.
“RUN!!!!!!!” Jack yelled. We ran as fast as we could. The footsteps were getting faster!
We kept running and running and running until Ethan yelled “STOP!!! I want to see what it is!”
He asked Braxtyn for the flashlight and flashed it where the footsteps were coming from. Then, a white tailed deer with rabies came running out of nowhere! He was about to go for Ethan, but then Jack shot the deer right in the weak spot.
“Bullseye!” Jack beamed as we sprinted from the deer.
“Woah, that was scary!” I exclaimed.
“Thank God Jack shot it before it was too late!” said Sean.
“That scared the life out of me!” Braxtyn said.
“You can thank me!” Jack replied.
“Thank you!” we chorused.
“Your welcome!” Jack replied.
“Should we take a break?” I suggested.
“Sure.” everyone nodded. Conveniently, there were benches and a place for a fire. I found some wood and threw it in. We started the fire.
“Alright, we can save battery now,” Braxtyn said as he turned off the flashlight.
I looked around. Wait, isn’t this the cottage that I go to every summer? “Guys, I don’t think the forest is haunted. It’s magic! This is the cottage that I go to every summer that’s far away from here!” I shouted with amazement.
“Yeah, it used the same magic that brought us to the corn maze and back.” Sean agreed.
“That sounds like a bunch of phoney baloney.” Braxtyn stated.“But hey, if this is the cottage you go to, perhaps it is.”
Surprisingly, the cottage lights were on. I checked the time. It was 8:06. Suddenly, someone opened the door. It was my Uncle Russ!
“What the? Max, what are you doing here? And who are these people?” he asked.
“Hi Uncle Russ,” I waved. “These are my friends Jack, Ethan, Braxtyn, and Sean.”
“Hi guys. Do any of you deer hunt?”
“Jack and Ethan do.”
“Cool! Which one is which?”
“Jack, Ethan, Braxtyn, Sean.” I pointed out the guys as I told him.
“Okay. Jack and Ethan, do you want to hunt with me sometime?”
“Sure!” Jack and Ethan replied.
“Alright! I gotta go to bed. I’m really tired. Gotta go deer hunting tomorrow.”
“Okay, goodnight!”
“Bye!”
Uncle Russ stopped before he went inside. He turned around. “Before I go, can you tell me how you all got here?”
“We went to a haunted forest that was somehow magic and teleported us here.”
“I’ll just take that as the most reliable answer I can get. You can come inside anytime,” he said as he went inside.
“Okay, that was very surprising,” Braxtyn said.
“I know. That’s proof that the forest was magic,” I replied. I was playing with one of my rubik’s cubes. After a while, we decided to put out the fire in the fire pit and go have some fun in the forest, but when we left, we were back at Ethan’s house. It was like we woke up from a strange dream. We were wondering what had happened.
We wanted to go back, so we did. It was 8:49 at this point. That’s when things were getting even scarier. When we were back at playing Haunted Forest Tag, we were playing non-stop with no interruptions. It was really fun. I think we went 7 rounds before being interrupted by some other people. It was some of my friends; Tommy, Rakin, Bobby, and Carmello.
“Hi guys! What are you four doing here?” I asked. “We wanted to explore because we thought you would be here. I was right!” Rakin replied.
“Hey! Wanna join our game of Haunted Forest Tag?” Ethan asked.
“Sure!” they said, but that wasn’t the scary part.
All of a sudden, we were teleported to an old arcade!
“Woah! What happened?” Bobby asked.
“It’s actually a magic forest. It can teleport us places!” Braxtyn replied.
“That sounds like a bunch of baloney, but your right!” Tommy said.
“Let’s look for leftover coins so we can play the arcade game,.” Sean said.
“Good idea!” Jack said. That’s what we did. By the way, if you didn’t notice by now, the arcade machines are working. Maybe it’s not an oldarcade. Maybe it’s just an abandoned project, because some places in the building don’t have arcade machines? I can’t believe it still had electricity. We looked for loose coins and at some point, I found a huge stash of coins.
“Guys, look! We’re rich!” I yelled.
Everyone scrambled over to the coin stash. We grabbed enough to play all the arcade games. They were so fun! When Carmello got to the one we haven’t played yet, he found out something was wrong.
“Guys, I think I did something wrong!” he yelled.
We sprinted over to the arcade machine. It said that if you lose, you will meet your doom. All of a sudden, the game started.
“Hurry! Take the plug out before I lose!” Bobby yelled. While he was playing it, I plugged out the game, but it still didn’t turn off!
“IT’S STILL ON!” I screamed. Sean must have had a great idea, because he ran to where the coin vault is, and hit the switch. That made the game turn off.
“Great job and good thinking, Sean!” I said.
“Thank you!” we all said to Sean.
“You’re definitely welcome,” he replied. Then, we heard voices calling for help. With my good hearing, I identified the voices to be coming from Shayan, Elton, and Langston!
“Guys, that’s Shayan, Elton, and Langston!” I yelled. “Follow me!”
I followed the voice while the others followed me. There was a door that was locked.
“We need someone to pull this door open,” I said.
“Wait, there’s a rubik’s cube there,” Jack said as he pointed where the rubik’s cube was.
“Ah-ha!” I said. “That’s an Oskar’s Treasure Chest. You can open it when the top layer is solved. There must be a key in it! Thanks, Jack.”
“You’re welcome.” Jack said. I wonder why there is so many “Thank you’s” and “You’re welcome’s” in this book. I guess I had to put them there, right? I took the treasure chest and solved the top layer as fast as I could. Fortunately, I opened the cube quickly. Inside, there was a key.
“Found it!” I yelled. I hurried and opened the door with it. The key worked like a charm. Inside the room was Shayan, Elton, and Langston!
“Max!” they yelled.
“Hi,” I said.
“Thank you for getting us out. I regret trying to play that game,” Shayan said.
“We went to that haunted forest and got teleported here,” Elton added.
“I’m not sure how, but that’s what happened!” Langston said.
“You’re welcome,” I said. “We got teleported the same way.” Now we’re a group of 12 people: Shayan, Elton, Tommy, Bobby, Carmello, Rakin, Ethan, Jack, Sean, Langston, and me.
“We should go,” Rakin said.
Suddenly, we were at the school playground.
“Guys, let’s take a break here,” Ethan said.
“Good idea,” Tommy replied. It was 10:21 PM. It was that late. We turned on the flashlight, and found Gabriel, Jordan, Colin, and Adrian, having a meeting.
“Oh, hi, Max!” Colin said.
“Don’t mind us. We’re just having a Gods of Olympus meeting,” Gabriel added.
“Oh. Well, we were exploring a haunted forest, and we decided to take a break here,” I replied.
“Ok,” Adrian said.
Suddenly, the flashlight creepily flashed off.
“Guys, the flashlight ran out of battery,” Braxtyn said.
“We can just use my phone,” Ethan said. We started our break. I decided to play on my New 3DS XL. I played a game called Ultimate Angler, where you go fishing. You can catch giant fish! At 10:50, Tommy said that we should go back now. We agreed. So, we left to the forest. We decided to stop playing Haunted Forest Tag and start exploring more. After a while, we were back at the cottage.
“Oh, we’re back!” Jack said.
“Guys, this is the cottage Max goes to every summer.” he added. You can come inside anytime, I remembered Uncle Russ saying.
“Can we go inside?” Sean asked.
“Okay,” I replied.
“I’m interested in exploring. Count me in,” Elton said. The rest of us agreed. We went in the cottage.
“Be quiet guys,” Sean whispered. “We don’t want to wake up anyone.”
“Okay.” Shayan replied.
We explored for a bit. Our first stop was downstairs. Shayan was whispering about stuff and I partially understood. However, there were my younger cousins sleeping down here. We walked very quietly. Rakin decided to open the fridge, and found random Gatorade bottles inside.
“Guys, I just got a great idea,” I whispered. “We can make our own juice out of Gatorade. We can experiment.”
“Sounds like a great idea. We should try it,” Ethan whispered.
“Let’s try to keep quiet, though,” Bobby whispered.
“That’s what we’re doing,” Elton whispered. We started experimenting with our drinks.
“Guys, I made one that tastes like cola!” Tommy whisper-yelled.
Rakin drank some of it. “Oh my gosh, it does!” he whispered.
We all tried it. Of course, we all had it in different cups, and nobody drank from the source. Hey, we’re not stupid! We had some more fun with making new juices, from Green Cola to Pumpkin Slime. I should also point out that there was cream soda, original and orange flavors, so we can make even more types of juice.
Eventually, we decided to leave. However, when we went up the stairs, we accidentally woke up Alex, one of my cousins.
“Max? What are you doing here?” he asked.
“No time to explain.” I replied. “Gotta go.”
“Okay, bye.” Alex said.
“Bye.”
We went out the door.
All of a sudden, empty soda cans and gatorade bottles started falling from the sky!
“CANS! BOTTLES!” I screamed.
We all started laughing and screaming of how crazy and terrifying it is. Suddenly, it stopped raining. Then we heard footsteps. It was another deer with rabies! It started running towards me! Luckily, Ethan was prepared and tried to shoot the deer with an AK-47, but missed! However, Sean pulled out one of Ethan’s guns and actually shot the deer, right on time!
“Nice job, Sean!” I said, but then more deer came and surrounded us! Luckily, they didn’t have rabies. They surrounded us like we were prey and started making unusual noises. We tried running past them, but they blocked us from escaping.
“This is what I was prepared for,” Rakin said as he pulled out the rocket launcher he had packed.
“Oh no!” said Elton.
“Oh yes.” Rakin replied with a smirk. He aimed the launcher at the ground. “Hold on, guys!”
We held on to Rakin for dear life as he shot the rocket launcher at the ground. PEEEWWW! Up and above we went!
“We’re going down!” Rakin yelled, worry and fear coating his voice. All of a sudden, Elton and I fell off!
“NOOO!” Rakin screamed.
As we were falling, I thought about the time I had a dream about Elton being killed, and how sad I was when I woke up. So guess what I did? I held Elton in front of me. When we hit the ground, Elton landed on me, and he was okay. I wasn’t. It was worth it, I thought. The rest of us ran towards Elton and me and asked if I was okay.
“I’m not too sure.” I replied as I got back up. It felt like I didn’t fall on the ground at all. “Actually, I am fine.” I added.
“Good.” Shayan said. Suddenly, I felt tapping on my shoulder. I turned around.
“Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.”
It was a clown!
“AAAAAAH!” I screamed. “That’s Pennywise from It! RUN!!!!!!!” I yelled.
“But that’s a deer!” Carmello said.
“RUNNNN!!”
We ran for our lives. But, wait! When I looked again, it was actually a deer. But it had huge, sharp antlers! As we ran, Ethan shot the deer with his AK-47. Elton gasped as the bullet flew right by him. When the shot hit the deer, it fell right down. As it fell, the antlers scraped Jack’s leg. What’s with Jack and scraping today? Or tonight, actually. It’s almost 12:00.
“HOLY BLOOD! IS THAT MINE?” he yelled as he noticed the huge scar that was bleeding like crazy. Suddenly, the CRAZIEST thing happened. It was pure chaos. The group of deer came back, it started raining cans and bottles again, and there was Pennywise.
“Hello again!” he said with a creepy smile spreading across his face.
“THAT’S ACTUALLY PENNYWISE!!! RUNNNNNN!!!!!” Tommy screamed.
We were running as fast as we could.
“The floor is lava!” Pennywise said as we ran.
All of a sudden, the floor started turning into lava! Fortunately, there was a bench. But we couldn’t reach it because it was too high!
“Hold on guys!” Rakin said as he blasted the rocket launcher at the ground again. Up we went again! We all landed on the bench. We waited for the floor to turn from lava back to normal.
Eventually, the lava disappeared. “Hold on again!” Rakin yelled once again. He shot the rocket launcher at the branch amd down we went! Somehow, we landed on our feet, but Pennywise and the deer were still there, so, we kept running. Eventually, we ran out of the forest. I looked back. They were still there!
“Follow me, guys!” Ethan yelled. We followed Ethan to his house. After a long while of running, we were there! We ran inside and, before Ethan went in and closed the door, he shot his gun. Pennywise disappeared, and the deer ran away.
“Dude, did you actually shoot Pennywise?” Langston asked.
“Let me check,” Ethan replied. He went outside. About a minute later, he came back inside.
“I actually did!” Ethan beamed.
“Oooooooooh, savage!” we all said in unison.
“You can all sleep over if you want,” Ethan suggested hopefully. We all agreed because we were too exhausted to walk home. We checked our bags. My bag had all of the things I brought and so did everyone else’s packs. We started talking about how crazy that experience was. We also asked Shayan, Elton, and Langston if they want to play Haunted Forest Tag at school. They all said yes.
When it hit midnight, I yelled “HAPPY BIRTHDAY ETHAN!” because his birthday was on November 1st.
“Oh, thanks for noticing!” he replied.
“Guys, you think we should go back?” Braxtyn asked.
“No, let’s go sleep. I’m tired.” Sean replied.
“Good idea.” Langston said.
THE END