Chapter 37 Beck
Beck
Beck held up both hands for high fives as Carter rushed down from the balcony. She smacked his hands then turned to high-five Adi, too, but to Beck’s surprise, Adi swooped Carter up and spun her around.
“That was incredible!” Adi yelled.
“I bet that’s the fastest anyone has ever gotten through the challenge,” said Beck. “How did you—”
“Pi,” she said breathlessly, tucking a curl behind her ear as Adi released her. “Easy as pi. Get it?”
“Like . . . the number?”
“Enough chitchat!” yelled Sierra. “The clock’s ticking.” But even she was grinning.
They joined her in front of the clown face.
“There are codes on the tickets,” Adi said, flipping them over so they could see the text printed on each side.
VEKQQ CMH
RKMX
RKWWKX
Adi was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “K is almost certainly a vowel, but we’re going to need a cipher.”
One by one, they each held a ticket beneath the scanner next to the clown’s bulging red nose.
Once the scanner beeped at the fourth ticket, the doors swung open on loud, squeaky hinges, and cackling laughter filtered out, followed by an eerie voice.
“Welcome to my fun house! Once you’re in, you won’t want to leave! ”
Beck ran his tongue across the front of his teeth, trying to neutralize the onslaught of textures and flavors this room was conjuring. Bubble gum from the popping balloons, dirty iron from the squeaking hinges, and a medicinal tang from the clown’s uncanny laughter.
As soon as they stepped inside, the doors creaked shut behind them.
They were standing in a square room with a checkerboard floor.
The walls were painted with disorienting black-and-white swirls covered over in neon graffiti.
Three tall mirrors hung on one wall. On another wall stood a giant carnival wheel.
The paint was dingy and cracked in places, and trash littered the floor—discarded cups, ticket stubs, even a paper food boat with a few soggy french fries still inside.
The room was so decrepit, so ominous, so authentically disturbing. Beck was smitten. Total Game Master goals.
As one, they moved forward to explore the room. And as one, they yelped and jumped back when the checkerboard floor lit up where they stepped—forest green, vivid orange, sky blue, fluorescent pink.
They glanced at each other, shrugged, and carried on. The floor tiles changed to different colors every time they stepped on them, then returned to black or white as soon as they stepped off.
“Adi, you’ve got the wheel,” said Sierra. “Carter, inspect the mirrors. Beck . . . do you mind sifting through that pile of trash?”
“I don’t mind at all,” he said, sitting cross-legged on a lit-up purple tile to paw through the junk.
“They’re fun-house mirrors,” said Carter. “The kind that distort your reflection. This one has a keypad underneath. Uh . . . looks like we need a word, five letters. And this one’s got a padlock, so we’re looking for a key, too.”
“Key, five-letter word,” repeated Sierra. “Try the letters on the ticket. V-E-K-Q-Q?”
“No go. Maybe something fun-house related,” said Carter. “Clown? Music?”
“Creepy as hell,” Adi muttered, inspecting the wheel.
Beck smirked. “Not a fan of carnivals?”
“Not a fan of clowns. God, they freak me out.” Adi shuddered.
“There are three levels to this wheel. Each level is a mix of letters, blank spaces, and the occasional illustrated clown doing, I don’t know.
Creepy clown things. It’s probably the cipher for those tickets if we can line them up right.
” He started playing with the wheels, frowning as he aligned and realigned them.
“There’s something about this graffiti,” said Sierra. “Like maybe there’s a message hidden in it, but it’s . . . an optical illusion?”
Beck reached for the boat of old, soggy fries. Gross. He was about to chuck it into a corner when his eye caught writing under the food. He dumped out the fries to find a code underneath.
“Adi!” he said, hopping to his feet. “We’ve got the key to a pigpen cipher.’’
Adi took one look at the code and . . . scoffed. “Child’s play. I’ve had pigpen cipher memorized since I was twelve.”
Beck frowned. “Ooo-kay,” he said, returning to his pile of garbage and leaving Adi to his clown wheel.
Suddenly, the room went dark, the bright carnival lights replaced with a haunting purple-black glow.
The wheel started spinning. Air blasted from random holes in the ceiling.
Mad, clownish laughter echoed off the walls, tasting like gloopy hand sanitizer, followed by that kooky voice again.
“You’re not ready to leave yet, are you? We’re just getting started!”
“Did we do something to set that off ?” asked Adi.
“The time,” said Carter, gesturing at the red clock ticking away above the three mirrors. “It’s been exactly ten minutes since we started the round. Maybe it happens in intervals as a distraction.”
Not finding anything else of note among the junk, Beck moved beside Carter, eyeing his reflection in the center mirror. He chuckled. “Nice giraffe neck.”
“Nice gargantuan chin,” she countered.
“A gargantuan chin?” said Adi. “Like this guy?” He pointed at one of the clowns painted on the outer wheel, who did indeed have a long, droopy chin.
“Yeah, sort of,” said Beck. “And that one over there looks like . . .”
The two of them gasped.
“That’s the clue,” said Adi, spinning the wheel so that the long-necked and big-chinned clowns lined up. “What’s the third one?”
Beck and Carter crowded together in front of the next mirror. “Short legs and a tall, skinny torso,” said Beck.
“Plus a big forehead,” Carter added.
Adi found a corresponding clown image on the innermost wheel. Once the wheels were aligned with the three clowns stacked on top of each other, he fished the tickets out from his pocket and started comparing the letters to those on the wheels.
VEKQQ
CMH
RKMX
RKWWKX
“This is it!” said Adi. “The first word is ‘floss.’”
Beck made a face. “Seriously?”
Sierra immediately crouched beside the mirror and put FLOSS into the word padlock. “Didn’t open,” she said.
“Next one . . . ARM,” said Adi. “Then . . . CORN. And last one . . .” Seconds passed while he scanned the wheel. “C-O-T . . . COTTON!”
“Floss, arm, corn, and cotton?” said Sierra. “What—”
“‘Candy’!” Carter and Beck shouted at the same time, making Adi jump.
“Oh . . . right,” said Sierra. “Candy corn, arm candy . . . I get it.” She spun the dials on the padlock, spelling out CANDY. The lock popped open. The whole mirror swung out toward her . . . and she was promptly buried beneath an avalanche of rainbow-colored stuffed animals.
“Whoa,” said Beck. “That is childhood fantasies right there.” As soon as Sierra had extricated herself, Beck held up his arms, hollering, “Stuffie pile!” and plunged into the mound of stuffed animals.
“Beck, knock it off,” said Adi as the team started to dig through, searching for the next clue.
Beck pretended to do the backstroke. “Let me have this moment.”
“Do we have to count them?” asked Carter. “Or sort them somehow?”
Beck grabbed a frog and held it up over his head. “Here’s an idea. What if—”
But before he could finish, the lights went out again, plunging them into the same glowing purple. The wheels began to spin. That haunting laughter echoed off the walls.
Beck grimaced, working his tongue in an effort to dispel the thick, medicinal taste from his mouth.
“Adi!” cried Carter. “The graffiti!”
Beck scanned the paint. Not all the graffiti was responsive to the black light, so that the parts that did glow lit up like ancient runes. A pattern of squares and angles and dots.
“Where did that code go?” yelled Sierra.
Tossing aside the frog, Beck started searching for the paper boat with the code on it as the clown cackled. “Are we having fun yet? I hope you never leave!”
The voice faded, the lights brightened again, and the glow-in-thedark paint disappeared.
Sierra cursed.
“Has it been ten minutes already?” said Carter, glancing at the clock. “No, it’s only been five. I guess it happens every five minutes. Which means . . . we have to wait another five minutes to know what it said.”
“‘Watch your step,’” said Adi. “Whatever that means. Now, can we figure out these stuffed animals? God, this room is a literal nightmare.”
Beck looked at him, baffled. “Watch your step?”
“That’s what it said.” Adi took in his teammates’ surprised looks. “I told you I memorized pigpen cipher when I was a kid.”
“Right,” said Beck. “What I was going to say before Bozo started taunting us is that every stuffed animal is a different color. What if we have to put them on the corresponding tiles?” He grabbed the frog and set it on a floor tile by the door, which immediately lit up the same forest green.
When Beck moved away, the tile stayed lit.
“Brilliant,” whispered Sierra, and Beck preened. “Everyone, let’s get these tiles lit up!”
The next few minutes were chaos as they grabbed purple elephants and orange whales and blue koalas, debating if this red chihuahua was more maroon red or brick red, and whether this yellow tile matched the mustard-yellow python or the goldish-yellow hippo.They soon realized that they only had it right when the square stayed lit once they stepped off.
Beck had just picked up a lime-green chameleon when Carter shouted, “Last one!” and slammed a violet unicorn down on the final square. The second mirror popped open, revealing yet another creepy clown head, its mouth wide open in a fist-sized hole.
“But what about this one?” said Beck, holding up the lizard.
They looked at him, at the chameleon, then at the scattered stuffies.
“Maybe we need it for something later?” suggested Carter.
“Check it for additional clues,” said Sierra.