The Curse

Chapter Three- Jacob

    I was looking around for anything on the list of things in the scavenger hunt. I reached my hand behind the fridge. I felt a cylinder shaped item. Weird. I picked it up and looked at it. It was a scroll.
    “Hey guys! Come here! I found something!”  I called out. Everyone came running as I opened the scroll, I read it out loud. “If you found the scroll you have unlocked my curse, to get through my kingdom you must stick together through better or worse.” It rhymed. Just like the text from earlier.
    “Ok ok ok, not the time to joke around. Luke, Will, what is the meaning of all the rhyming messages?” Emmy asked with a slight laugh in her voice. I looked at the message. Everyone's eyes were fixated on the scroll. Everyone except for Grace. She was screaming bloody murder. We turned around and saw that we weren’t at Luke and Will’s anymore. We were in front of a giant, red, bush maze!
    “How did we get here?!” Nikita yelled.
    “Shh!” Joss retorted “We don’t know what can hear us!” Joss looked around and held her backpack tightly on her back. Emmy and Grace were by her sides. We all linked arms and looked around.
“This must be his kingdom. . .” Gracie said.
“Are you serious? That was totally fake you idiot!” Nikita yelled.
“Now Nikita, was that very nice?” Joss asked as she put a hand on Nikita’s shoulder.
“You’re not my mom so stop acting like it!” He screamed into Joss’s face. Her expression changed from stern but scared to about to cry in a split second.
“You’re gonna make her cry! Don’t be like that, Nikita!” Emmy said as she shoved Nikita to the ground. Nikita kicked Emmy in the shin as Joss started to cry.
“Are you guys forgetting what the scroll said? Get along or we are all gonna die!” Luke yelled. All the comotion stopped right then and there. Everyone went silent. “Good. Now Joss, can you make us a plan? You’re the best at that.” He said as he went up to Joss. Joss nodded softly as she put her backpack on the ground. She pulled out a homemade journal and a pencil and started to jot down a plan.
“Ok. Your partner is the person you were paired up with for the scavenger hunt. Do not, and I repeat, do not lose your buddy!” Joss said as she wrote down the groups.
Essie and Nikita,
Gracie and Geoff,
Charlotte and Will,
Grace and I,  
Joss and Levi,
Emmy and Luke.
“Ok. Everyone pair up” I said as I grabbed Grace’s arm. All the buddies linked arms. We looked at the maze in front of us. It was huge. Scarily huge. Grace gripped my arm and nodded as we all started forward, Joss and Levi leading the group.
Deeper into the maze I realized something. “Guys. . . Where are Joss and Levi?” Everyone started to look around as we then heard a bloodcurdling scream. Scary, but recognizable. It was Joss.
Sprinting forward we tried to find the source of the screaming. As we approached it the screaming ceased. It was like magic. Levi was sprawled on the ground, holding his chest and coughing. He had been thrown against a wall, I could tell. We helped Levi up and patted his back.
“I tried! I tried to save her! I wasn’t strong enough!” Levi shouted.
“Why did you guys leave us!”  I yelled as everyone began to panic.
“Guys, it’s gonna be ok. We need to calm down and think.” Levi said. This was one of the times where him keeping his cool came in handy. Even after being thrown against a wall and losing his best friend to a possibly man-eating monster, he was still calm.
Once we had all calmed down we sat in a circle. No one had a plan and no one could think of one. We were all scared and had no supplies. Joss’s backpack was more important than we thought! We kept alert as we noticed the faintest sound, Joss’s crying. Essie jumped up and listened to the faint sound. Soon enough she darted off.
“Essie! Your buddy!” I yelled. Nikita shot up quickly and ran after her. We couldn’t tell if it was genuine concern of just the temptation of seeing Joss cry.
“Essie! Wait!” Nikita yelled. He sounded scared but excited at the same time. Similar emotions when you really think about it.
“Guys. . . Do we go after them?” Emmy asked.
“If it means we can find Joss, I’m in.” Geoffrey and Charlotte said in almost the same moment. We all shot up and started to run after them. We heard a screech, an inhuman screech. Nothing familiar to our ears.
In that instance we heard a loud grunt. We looked over and saw Nikita being taken up by a giant, red monster. We all screamed in terror as we pushed Essie behind us. She wanted to fight but we wouldn’t let her. Just then, I, Jacob Tetlow, ran towards the monster and pulled Nikita away from it. I kicked the monster and it screeched in horror. It ran away and disappeared into the abyss.
“Nikita! What were you thinking!” I yelled at him, clearly furious.
“I-I thought I could get Joss back. . . Have a purpose in this group.” Nikita sighed and rubbed his sore ribs. He groaned at the contact of his fingers on his bruised skin. I laid him on the ground and he sighed. Emmy turned away and scoffed under her breath
“Idiot. . .” she sat down and grumbled. Everyone began to panic. Nikita pulled something out of his pocket. A note that read: “guys, Don’t panic. yoU have Nothing to fear. you’re Going to bE Ok. bye Now.”
She has perfect grammar, spelling, and punctuation all the time. This was weird. Luke tore the note from Nikita’s hands and grabbed a pencil and paper from his back pocket. He wrote down all the capital letters and it spelled “DUNGEON”. She was in a dungeon. This was amazing! How did she know we would get this? On the back were a bunch of scribbles.
“Wait. Let me see that.” Gracie said, grabbing the note. “It’s a map. She’s leading us to her!” We all cheered but it was missing a certain buzz. We turned around and Nikita was gone.
“Guys! We can’t afford to lose anyone else! Stay together!” Grace said as she kept by my side. She sighed and looked at the map. “We need to go back to where we found Levi.” We all linked arms and started to run to the spot where we had found him.
Once we arrived we started walking the path of the map. It was so confusing but Levi could make sense of it. Levi, Grace, Emmy, Essie, Geoffrey, Luke, Will, Charlotte, Gracie, and I were the only ones left. We grabbed each others hands and kept walking.
We came up on a big empty patch of land with a big pit in the center.
“They must be in there.” Charlotte said, looking into the pit. She sighed and groaned as she stepped back. We all looked down the hole and almost choked on our own breath. It was way too big to go down. I reached behind me and grabbed ahold of Esther
“Essie, we need you to shoot an arrow straight over there.” I said. I grabbed a bow and arrow which was attached to the wall and handed it to Essie. “Shoot it towards that tree.” I was sure she would make it. There was no way that she could miss it. It was only 15 yards away, easy target for her. Emmy tied a rope to the end of the arrow and gave it back to Essie.
“So we can go down the hole. Right Jacob?” Emmy asked me as she turned in the direction of the hole.
“Right you are, Emmy.” I said as Essie loaded the arrow and held it to her arms. She pulled back the bow string and shot the arrow. It stuck right into the center of the tree. Bullseye. We all cheered as the rope cascaded down the big pit.
“Good job Essie!” Levi said as he patted her back
“Yeah! Great job!” Will said, doing the same.
“Thanks guys. It was really nothing.” Esther said as humbly as she could, but we can all tell she is proud of herself.