Preknowings: Success Always Fails (PUBLISHED ON AMAZON)

Dungeon of Spiders

Finally, we made it to the Great Wall. Well, the bottom side of the Wall. We would never make it in this way. The man we'd come with had an argument about who would 'remove them,' whatever that meant. They decided that the man who crashed us out of the crate would 'remove them.' I couldn't tell what they said his name was, though. He went up to the side of the Great Wall and pulled nine random bricks out of it. A big doorway appeared. It was simply amazing.

Ralph, Pauline, and I were led in through the door into what looked like an ancient elevator. After everyone was inside, a man pushed one brick in. The doorway closed up and the elevator-like structure lifted us upward. When it stopped, stone stairs rose up from the floor to the ceiling. Then, the roof opened up with the sound of stone rubbing against stone. Everyone calmly stepped up the stairs in an orderly fashion. After all of us were up and out the elevator, the ceiling closed back up and I could hear the ancient machine moving back down to where it had been when we'd first seen it. I looked over the edge of the Wall. The vast region of majestic mountains and glorifying trees seemed to stretch on to infinity around us. It was intriguingly beautiful. Pauline felt it too. The feeling of pure bliss.

Suddenly, a man mercilessly yanked us out of our bliss and back into the real, cruel world. The Chinese men lined us up. Ralph, Pauline, and me. In that order. Three new men led us and three followed us. All of them were armed and alert. We walked nonstop for at least thirty minutes before coming to a covered structure with walls and windows. That was where we stopped. We stood there in silence for a while. Finally, a man came from the orderly line. He stepped forward, then turned around to face us. "Kai!" He shouted. Another man stepped forward. All of the men looked exactly the same. The men mumbled to each other in Chinese, then one moved to his left and lifted up four stones from the floor. The dream, I thought. Next, the man pointed to the hole in the floor. Stairs led down under the stones that had just been removed. I shook my head no. He gave us a fiercer look and pointed again to the dark hole. "Get in!" He screamed. We obeyed. As soon as I took the first step down into the pit of blackness, I regretted it. I also knew there was no going back. Pauline and Ralph followed my lead. What else could we do? I asked myself. We looked back up out of the hole. The man up there looked at us like we were a bunch of dead rats. He left out view, then threw our backpacks down with us. Before he sealed up the hole, he gave us a fake sympathetic face that made me want to punch him in the stomach. I didn't realize my fists were clenched until Pauline put a hand on my shoulder. I turned and looked into her beautiful blue eyes. They felt melancholy. She knew we'd finally lost. Then, the place turned pitch black.

"Wait!" I shouted, "Everything's still in our backpacks! We have four flashlights!" Rosenbaum was right! We would need them for our mission after all! "They probably left everything in our backpacks because they knew the stuff in them wouldn't last forever." Pauline said glumly. I sat down on the stairs and felt around in my bookbag for a flashlight. I found one and turned it on. "Yes!" Pauline cheered. But I wasn't smiling. There was definitely something wrong here. "Pauline," I said, "Hey, Pauline. Don't freak out. Don't move." Her smile turned into a frown.

"What is it?" She asked. "You have a huge red-kneed tarantula on your leg!" She screamed and spun around, trying to swat it off. "Hold still!" I yelled over her screams. She did as I said, breathing heavily. With the flashlight, I gently pushed the arachnid off of her leg and onto Ralph's face! He flipped out! Everyone was screaming now. Somehow, the tarantula ended up on the stairs. Everyone calmed down. But something else was bothering me. A chill raced down my spine. For satisfaction, I tried stepping on the tarantula on the floor. I killed it, but there was still something there. "Don't move," I told Pauline and Ralph. I pointed the flashlight at the walls.

Giant spiders of all sorts filled every inch of space on the walls. Every one of them was still and silent, but the tension on the staircase grew. I was so overcome with panic that I couldn't move. Suddenly, the spiders swayed back and forth, making a hissing sound. They did it for a few seconds, then stopped. I tried moving one leg down one step and.... they jumped.