You're It

"What friends you guys are!" Andy yelled in the direction of the barn doors, now closed behind him by his group of friends. He could hear them laughing, even through the thick wood of the barn. The laughter slowly diminished as Claus, Margret, Melody, and Felix walked away, leaving Andy all alone in the dark building.

"Man... who steals your keys and makes you go through a dark barn just to get them back? I really should have installed lighting..."

The apple shook his head, trying to think of what to do now. He put a hand to his chin, tapping his foot as he racked his brain for any particular thing he could do to help find his keys. After thinking about it for a few moments, an idea snapped into Andy's head, cheering him up a little.

"By golly, that's right!" He smiled brightly, relaxing his foot and arm. "I definitely left a lantern somewhere around here! Just have to find it..."

Andy nodded to himself, as he slowly began to make his way around the barn, carefully moving his arms around to feel for the lantern. Since the barn was dark, he couldn't really see more than a foot ahead of himself, which made Andy feel a little anxious...

The apple spent a few minutes searching the first floor of the barn, failing to find the lantern.

"Huh, I swore I left the lantern here... Must be on one of the upper floors."

With that, Andy felt around for the stairs, finding them quickly and making his way upstairs to the second floor.

The barn was quite different from other barns. It was four floors tall, and much smaller in size compared to your average barn. All the floors were basically empty too, minus the very top where there was a haystack maze that Andy and his friends had worked on a while ago. The apple didn't quite know what to do with the barn, leaving it to build up cobwebs and dust, and the structure became a home for some bugs. At least the barn looked like any other from the outside, with red walls and a white roof, all made with wood, paint, and elbow grease.

In a blink of an eye, Andy finished searching the second floor, no lantern there either. He made his way to the next set of stairs, walking up them as he shook his hands. As he walked up the stairs, one of the steps made a small creaking noise, causing Andy to stop in his tracks. He took his foot off the step, placing it back down to hear the creaking again.

"Gonna have to replace that sometime... And clean the place up," Andy commented, continuing on his way forward.

Once he made it to the third floor, a chill ran down Andy's spine, as the third floor was strangely cold compared to the other two he was just at.

"Aw, I hope the lantern is here so I don't have to go up another floor! It's starting to get cold and creepy in here."

The apple began his sweep of the floor, starting on the left as he felt around the floor once more. When the apple turned from the top left corner, he saw a flash of white on the right wall, causing Andy to stop what he was doing and look up. As his head turned up, the white disappeared just as quickly as Andy saw it, and the apple stared in confusion.

"Could have sworn I saw something..." The apple mumbled to himself, as his feeling of anxiety rose greatly. He tried to keep a cool head about it, rationalizing that it was just one of the many hallucinations he tended to have. They usually were horrifying, the images of strange people dying often haunted Andy.

"Can't think about that now, gotta find the lantern," Andy reminded himself, latching onto the wall as an anchor while he shakily used only his right arm to feel for the lantern.

After scaling the wall where the final set of stairs were for a few seconds, the apple felt the cold metal of the lanturn, even through his pristine, white gloves. Andy sighed a sigh of relief, picking up the lantern and turning it on. Thankfully the lantern still had a ton of oil left, and the room was illuminated slightly by the lantern's light, casting a golden hue on the nearby walls and floor.