Page 110 of Unwritten Rules

“Avoid the what?” I leaned in to get a better look at the guide. It didn’t tell us what to avoid at all.Well, that’ssuperhelpful. “What’s after that?”

“‘Enter the ring of stone.’”

Great. We were officially lost forever.

“Whatever let’s take the most logical path forward. There are three paths here. One of them takes us back and the other takes us forward.”

We stood with only our glow sticks as our only weapons and only hope. The stomping had stopped, but whoever it was had to still be out there, lurking. Maybe they were just pissed they got lost? That thought brought little comfort to my nerves.

“Baby girl...” A man’s voice called out, low and taunting.

My stomach dropped.Alexander.

"Pick one and run," I hissed to Kelly.

She chose the center path after I grabbed her hand and we sprinted in, feet crunching the fallen leaves in rapid succession. My breath came fast and shallow, my heartbeat pounding so loud it drowned out everything else. Alexander was in the maze, and he was looking for me.

We came to another decision—left or right. Kelly didn’t hesitate as she led us to the right, keeping her steps as light as possible while we made a run for it. I scrambled to keep up without stomping the hell out of the ground behind her.

“Baby girl,” he called out at a distance, “I know you’re in here. Come out, come out wherever you are.”

We hit a dead end. “Fuck,” I whispered.

Kelly didn’t miss a beat. “Let’s go through it.”

We heard him steadily walking around at that point, so the only option was to cheat the maze. A quick push through the corn led us to a corridor going left or right. We’d cut through the maze twice already and there was no time to try to figure out which way was right or wrong.

All we could do was move.

Rushing down the left part of the corridor, we came to a massive pumpkin in the way. “Is that in the guide at all?”

She looked down with her pathetic glow stick, scanning the guide quickly to find anything about a pumpkin. “Step six says ‘Leave me on your doorstep and I will guide the way.’”

“That sounds good enough to me.” I held up the glow stick to see if our pumpkin friend was carved. His face stared back at us, its jagged grin pointing to the right. “Score, his face points that way. Let’s go.”

We froze, holding our breath at the sound of the rustling of corn. Soft footsteps sounded like they were right on the other side of the corridor wall.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

No voice came along with the footsteps. I pointed in the direction we needed to go, and we set off slowly, trying to match our footsteps to the sound of the wind picking up leaves and shaking the corn to mask them.

Once we rounded a corner, she held up the guide to try to figure out where we would go next. “‘There must be a sacrifice’ is what it says,” she whispered.

I looked at the paper to verify. What kind of sacrifice? If that meant splitting up, I would die.

I took a deep breath before concluding it meant splitting up. “So, we split up and meet back up here when we find out which way leads us forward,” I said, steeling myself to prepare for an even worse end to the night.

“Count to one hundred and then make your way back here. It should give us enough time to figure it out before he finds us.”

I nodded, heading down the path to the left.

One, two, three...

With only my fading glow stick, I hope I had enough time to attempt to figure out what a sacrifice meant and get back to Kelly in time. The path I took was zany, multiple turns with only one path forward. It felt like a good sign that it led on for so long, but when I came to another break in the path, I wasn’t sure.

I chose the path to the left first, looking back to make sure I’d remember which one I came from.

Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two...

---