Slip 'n' Slide

While Roger stares out the window, Becky takes a closer look at the room around her. Specifically she looks for some clue as to where they should go or why they were there in the first place. She walks along the wall of pictures looking at the people, as if she should recognize anyone but nothing looks familiar or unusual. Just very normal pictures of rather grotesque figures.

For instance, one picture is of a set of chairs and a table, with drinks and glasses upon it, and beside it stands a man. The man in the picture doesn’t look strange in any way from the neck down, wearing a very unexceptional tuxedo. The face however is strange. Though it has the shape of man’s, it bears horns like a ram, and dark, black filled eyes like a sheep. Its nose is only two little slits, like a snake’s and it has no mouth at all. The bestial man is unnerving and yet Becky finds it difficult to look away.

And for good reason, perhaps. The longer she stares at the picture the more she begins to realize that she has seen this exact chair and table set, and in this exact room. She looks over to the table where her husband had previously gushed over the whiskey. She’s almost one hundred percent certain that they are the same. Looking back at the picture she notices that only one of the beast man hands are on the top of the table holding a glass. The other hand is reaching below, and pressing something along the edge.

Sure that there is only one possible way to find out if the table in the picture is the same as the table in the room, she dashes over to the drinks area and runs her fingers along the underside of the protruding edge. Two thirds of the way along the front of the table she finds a small button and without thinking, without even considering telling her husband about this intriguing new find, her finger pushes it.

The wall behind the drinks table moves, rotating along with the floor beneath, so smoothly it barely makes a sound, but fast. So fast Becky doesn’t have time to leap out of the way. A chair hits her in the back of her knees forcing her to sit as she is transported behind the games room wall. The jerk of the wall fitting back into place throws her from the chair headlong into darkness. She braces herself, expecting to hit level ground but instead lands on a narrow slope, a slide, weaving and twisting down, down, down, until falls out, somewhere dank, dark and wet up to her knees.

Upstairs, Roger finally turns away from the window. A few flashes of lightning were ironically not particularly illuminating as far as the cars go. Sometimes he thought he saw many cars, sometimes only one, even more perturbing, sometimes none at all. Worse, at times the shadows played tricks on him, appearing as men approaching the mansion, and sometimes fleeing. The flashes were beginning to hurt his eyes, causing bright spots, so taking a rest, he turns from the window and looks around the gameroom for his wife.

Of course, Becky is nowhere to be found and almost just as alarming, the drinks area has vanished entirely as well.