Afraid of the Dark

Chāpter Twenty

They spent the next twenty minutes in a deep discussion, formulating a large and detailed plan which they could rely on to help them get out of the unimaginable situation which they had found themselves in. There were two main goals which they had to achieve, no matter what: escape this simulation, and save Seán.

The first goal was easier to understand how to complete, but as the group of three made their mental lists of everything which they would need to collect, find, watch and do, they were starting to realise how big of a task they had ahead of them. However, they took comfort in the fact that the game's chapter itself would usually take around two to three hours to complete on computer, which hopefully mean that they would not be stuck here for days. This was definitely a positive, considering that they did not know if there was drinkable water or edible food within the house which they were currently trapped in. Despite the fact they knew how to beat the chapter, the group decided that the first thing they should try and do would to be simply look for a way out, regardless of the game's story line. They would try the doors to see if they were locked. If they were, they would ram them with something. If that didn't help, then they would go to the windows and repeat the process. They didn't care if it was "breaking the rules", they wanted to get out as quickly as possible. However, if those escape options failed and they had to face the game's chapter to have a chance of leaving, then they had tried their hardest to remember every step of how to progress.

To start the chapter in the game, the player would need to find a picture that was stuck to a child's bedroom. They would then need to find keys around the house, for the basement and the garage. However, this fact confused them because they were already in the basement but no one had used a key. Unless Seán himself had somehow found it and used to, but this seemed pretty unlikely. Nevertheless, they would need the key to the garage. Once they had done that, they would need to trigger certain events in the house by knocking on certain doors or walls and finding drawings scribbled across the various rooms using a camera's flash, with the camera being found somewhere within the basement. It would lead them to a newly activated room, which was supposed to lead them outside, although Ethan was still adamant that this section of the game a was a hallucination and nothing more.

However, if there was the slightest chance that they would get to leave the house, they would make sure to spend as long as possible looking around the perimeters of the area. They had to have been put in this house somehow, so there must be a way to backtrack and find the exit, and the group theorized that it would be easier to hide one in an 'outdoors' area, so this would be where the escape route could be found. The outdoors 'tasks' consisted of getting into a treehouse, and using a key on a box to gain an item which no one could remember. They would then need to backtrack, go into the kid's bedroom once more, and enter a closet which would have a fake wall, covered up by a poster. This would lead them into a dark room filled with multiple closets and chests of drawers. They would need to find a small key to a bird cage within these objects, before getting to the back of the room and leaving. They should then enter into a room which is empty aside from a silver bird cage containing a wooden bird toy, which once collected should let them leave that room. There were a lot of rooms. The group struggled to remember what they were supposed to do next, but vaguely remembered having to put a plastic jaw on a broken mannequin or something, then cross a hole in the floor using a plank to get back to the main house, so that they could then go to a bathroom and initiate the final cut scene.

"How do you do that? Is there an item that you need to collect for for the final part?" Tyler questioned. He knew the least about the game, so was trying to absorb as much information as he possibly could.

"No, you just have to get in the bath and wait," Mark explained.

"Oh, that's not too bad then..."