Down the Escape Hatch

Trick bolted across the room, tripping over scattered clutter, and ripped the cardboard archeologist out of the corner. He expected to find some kind of speaker or wiring behind it. Instead both the wall and the cutout were empty.

"Hey!” He yelled, looking wildly up at the ceiling than down at the ground. "Hey, is anyone there? My friend just… just disappeared in a hole in the ground! What's going on?”

After a few seconds it became clear there was no answer coming any time soon so he did the next obvious thing. He went and checked the door they’d entered through. It had closed behind them at some point and Trick wasn't surprised to find it locked. For a few minutes he just leaned against the door, breathing deeply and doing his best not to panic. Once he got a handle on it he pushed away from the wall and looked around.

"Okay. What do we do now?” Trick went to the hatch and looked at it, taking great care not to touch it with any part of his body. It was a simple plastic or metal dome with a rubber gasket. The combination lock and handle were housed in a single assembly fixed in the middle. The numbers in the four dials of the lock read 0-0-0-7.

"That's weird,” Trick muttered. "He said he used the numbers two, zero, zero, seven. Wonder what that means…”

The tarp that had covered the hatch lay in a heap in the corner beyond the hatch. Trick carefully edged his way around the hatch to pick it up. On examination it proved not to be a sheet of woven vinyl, like most tarps had seen before. Instead it was a thin, silky sheet of unidentifiable fabric with a deep, lustrous sheen to its deep, black surface. Trick folded it up and shoved it under one arm.

For the next five minutes he worked his way around the outside of the room, rapping his knuckles on the walls and searching for some way out that didn't involve the hatch or the door. Once he was certain there wasn't he tried the door again. This time he tried to break it down, first slamming his shoulder against it a few times then kicking beside the doorknob several more. However the door remained stubbornly closed.

He wasn't an expert but he suspected that the whole door and doorframe were made of steel or at least steel reinforced. He leaned forward until his lips nearly touched the door's keyhole. "Hey!” Trick slammed the flat of his hand into the door twice. "Let me out of here and tell me what happened to Stan and I promise I won't press changes.”

He counted to one hundred before he decided there was no point waiting any longer. "It's an escape room,” he muttered. "I'll just have to figure out the escape.”

The gravity of his situation was really starting to settle in on him. He hadn't heard or seen anything from the hatch since it slammed closed ten minutes ago. That meant Stan hadn't made his way back to it. The scenery Trick had seen through the hole didn't make any sense either.

The Escape House was a hundred year old farm house built in a field later developed into a strip mall. There was no way a giant, cloud filled cavern with shadowy, flying creatures could fit under it. Not without the parking lot collapsing. Maybe it was a secret basement full of special effects that served as a bonus round and that was where the puzzles got even harder.

"And maybe they'll pay me a million dollars if I finish inside of an hour,” Trick muttered. "Not holding my breath, though.”

He took the corners of the tarp and tied them around his left wrist then spread the rest of the cloth behind him in a parachute before kneeling down at the hatch again. "Okay. We can just drop into the giant cloud wind tunnel. They gave me a parachute, I'm sure it'll be fine. Once I'm on the ground I'll go looking for Stan and we'll get out of here and be home in time for work tomorrow. I'll just have to remember how to get back here again.” Trick paused with one hand on the handle of the hatch. "Probably need an easy way to navigate, if it comes down to that.”

The sextant and a book of star charts proved harder to carry than he expected but he managed to get the book stuffed in a pocket and the sextant shoved into his belt. That settled, he went back to the hatch and readied himself again. Before he could think better of it he grabbed the handle and yanked it up, bracing himself for the rush of air.

However, once it opened the hatch revealed a dimly lit room with a gray floor and walls. There was no rushing wind, no clouds, no distant wings peeking through the mists and absolutely no sign of Stan. Confused, Trick gathered up the tarp and slung it over one shoulder before gingerly leaning down to peer through the hole.

As soon as his head went through a powerful wave of vertigo swept over him. He lost all sense of balance and tumbled head first through the hatch, flailing wildly, and landed on the floor in a heap. The fall did not take as long as he expected.

Or maybe it did, it was hard to tell for sure with his head spinning and his stomach heaving. Trick couldn’t say how long he spent lying there, trying not to throw up and waiting for the world to stop whirling over his head. He tried to think what could have happened to make him so nauseous. Unfortunately he couldn’t think of anything by the time the world stopped spinning so he shoved that question aside and pushed himself up to his feet, looking up overhead to try and spot the hatch.

However the ceiling appeared to be a smooth, solid surface. In fact, the more he looked at it the more it looked like the floor he’d seen through the hatch. Suspicious, he looked down and around, searching for a circular opening on the floor. Sure enough, there was one not three feet away, although the hatch - if that was what it was - was closed again. Odd that he hadn’t heard it shut. Or maybe not, given the condition he’d been in.

“I guess we’re not getting out that way,” Trick muttered. On a sudden impulse he stomped one foot down on the circular space as hard as he could, creating a dull thud. He frowned and stomped next to the space on normal ground, creating the exact same noise. “Well, worth a shot. Not sure why it sounds like that… but no point stressing out about it now.”

Not far beyond the hatch the room ended in a wall with an odd, vertical ribbing pattern to it. The rise and fall of the ridges made him think of the kind of sound baffling he’d seen in large auditoriums. A quick look around suggested these ridges did something else. It was only thirty feet by thirty feet at most, with gently curving walls mostly covered in the strange patterns. The room looked like a hexagon with slightly convex walls. The dim glow came from a round doorway in the wall furthest from where he’d arrived.

Hitching the tarp up over his shoulder he started for the opening, saying, “Let’s go have a look at where we are, shall we?”