•Sweet Like Lead Acetate•

•Chapter 3: The Hidden Door•

The group stepped back as they watched the boy's eyes glaze over.

Keegan let out a gasp of shock and worry when he began to speak.

"Guys...oh my gosh-there's words being etched into my vision," Keegan stammered out.

Nobody spoke.

"I can still see you guys! Please! I know I was a jerk, but I'm really scared. I've been bad all my life! I don't want to be bad anymore! This has to be my punishment! Please!!" He begged, clutching his hands in front of them.

Harrison looked around before squeezing his lips into a line and then furrowing his brow.

"Okay. Okay...so you can see...your eye though-" Harrison stutters.

"What about my eyes?!" Keegan says, panicked.

Sandra looks around. Nobody looks as though they have the heart to say it.

"Your eyes! They're glazed over. Like...completely grey. I'm sorry!" Sandra yelps.

Keegan's lip spill down into a frown as he gasps.

"What do we do?!" Henry hollers, worried.

Everybody is on edge. The brown haired girl with the bun, Lexi takes a step closer to Weimin and clutches his sleeve.

The boy looks over at her surprised, but sees just how scared she is.

He lets it happen.

"There's words! It's like they're being etched into everywhere I look. Like...LIKE A POPUP!" Keegan shouts, looking into the distance at something nobody else can see.

"What's it say?" Harrison asks gently.

Keegan's brow furrows.

"It says 'Find the key to the back room.' Th-that's all it says!" He says, looking around rapidly.

The group follows his movements, looking around as well.

"What back room?" Lexi says, still clutching Weimin's shirt.

She balls his shirt in her fist tighter before realizing what she was doing.

She looks up at the boy, a blush on his cheeks, although he's looking forward.

She jumps and pulls back.

"Oh my gosh, I'm sorry!" She says quickly.

Lexi has always been easily scared. Ever since she was a kid. She was a kind girl and super smart. In school, this led to people using her for her brains. She hated it. She really did. But she had no other choice. Though, she'd rather be used than he picked on and scared. So, she's never been in situation this scary since realizing what she had to do to avoid them. Be used. If that meant not being scared.

Though, she didn't really have a choice in the current situation.

"Hey, it's okay. I get it," Weimin spoke softly.

He understood latching onto things. People even. He knew all too well.

"Okay, so back room means there's a door somewhere around here-" Harrison says.

"And a key," Sandra adds.

"Are we really doing this? It's our choice!" Henry asks his friend, worried.

"We're locked in here with nowhere else to go! Now there's magical candy curses being placed on us-I wouldn't say we have any choice at all! Just- let's get through this, yeah?" Harrison says to Henry.

Though, the whole group hears.

They think about where they came from. Where they want to go. It's all led to this. What other choice do they have?

They all nod before speeding off in all directions of the candy shop to look for some sort of door and the key.

Henry and Bridget go towards the taffy, Weimin and Lexi head for the candy in jars, while Sandra goes with Harrison to the register. Keegan did his best to check the shelf on the back wall.

"Hey," Sandra says softly as Harrison looks around the dead register.

"Hi. You doing okay? You got pretty heated back there," Harrison says, taking a moment to look at the girl.

She just looks down to the ground.

"I'm sorry- did I say something?" He asks gently.

"No, it's not you- it's just...my sister is home with the babysitter right now. I promised her I'd be home before night fall," Sandra worries, looking up at Harrison through her lashes.

Harrison gives a small smile.

"We'll get out of this," He says, placing a hand on her shoulder.

She smiled at the boy before nodding and continuing to look around.

Meanwhile, Henry and Bridget dug their hands through piles of taffy, their hands getting sticky with sugar.

"This is actually not how I expected to spend my evening," she said, lifting her hand out of the taffy to see it colored with different pieces of the sticky substance.

Henry laughed.

"You're telling me," he said before continuing to dig.

Weimin and Lexi stuck their hands in the jars, barley feeling anything before Weimin sighed.

He picked up a large jar of colorful fruit chews before looking around. He spotted an empty cardboard box in the corner. He ran over and poured the entire thing out onto the shelf before sifting through the candy with his hands.

"This is much easier! Just pour all the candy out into here!" Weimin exclaimed to Lexi.

She quickly brought over jar after jar as the boy looked through the candy.

Eventually, Lexi brings a jar of gummy worms, dumping the whole thing out.

Though out of the corner of her eye, she sees something gold glisten before falling into the box.

"There! I just saw it!" She yelps.

Weimin quickly digs through the worms before pulling out a gold key!

"Got it!" He yells to the others.

They all group back together in the middle, Bridget and Henry wiping their sticky hands on their pants.

"Where's the door though?" Asks Henry.

"Here!" Keegan yells, pointing to the shelf.

The group runs over, seeing Keegan's eyes still glazed over.

"I think this entire shelf moves! It's kind of wobbling," he says, pushing it slightly.

Harrison nods before Weimin and Henry go over to help Keegan move the shelf.

The entire thing easily slides to the right, revealing a vintage wooden door.

"Woah-" Sandra gasps.

It looks almost centuries old. Full of cracks and chipped paint.

The door knob is still original brass like they used to use.

"The key! The key!" Keegan says, still startled.

Lexi passes it to him who quickly sticks it in the old door knob and twists.

As soon as he does so, his vision clears. No more messages. No more clouded eyes. Just normal.

Or as normal as it'll get.

The group gather close as Keegan pushes in the door.

And what they see- is not what you'd expect.