Dark Museum

Sophia

"Do you know how many hits we're gonna get with footage like this?" Diya insisted. "You can't possibly suggest we don't use it."

From outside, the hotel was a brick box in the middle of an empty parking lot. Inside reflected the ninety dollars Diya and Angel collectively paid for the night.

Sirens whined in the distance; men in the parking lot shouted, and the tenants next-door took advantage of the optional hourly rate.

The two single beds boasted mirrored headboards and blankets in a contrasting pattern to the industrial-pile carpet and blackout drapes. Under the window, a combination heater/air conditioner collected black dust in its grill. A flat-screen TV hung like a painting over a chair and a thin writing desk.

Angel and Diya hunched over a laptop on one bed while Sophia, Kieron, and Ajay sat on the other, awkward and exhausted.

"I couldn't even film anymore after I saw—" Angel tightened his lips and indicated the other bed with his eyes. He leaned close to Diya and whispered, supposedly quietly enough to hide his words, but they blazed across the otherwise silent room, "I'm still creeped out by them."

"I got plenty of footage on my phone," Diya said. "We can cut it together. This is gonna be huge. Really shut those people up forever. It's proof!"

Not long after Angel and Diya had gone downstairs in the museum, Angel rushed back out, staring wide-eyed at Sophia and Kieron as he hurried through the lobby and upstairs to the woods.

Lucky guy, Sophia had thought, not having to stay locked in that state of horror for weeks.

Once Diya finished in the museum an hour or so later, Angel charged them through the woods to the car.

"We have to decide how involved we want to be before we give everyone proof we were there," Angel said, and whispered, "And you fucking hit him with the car. This is so much more than Likes right now."

"If we call the police," Diya said, matching his hushed tone, "they'll nail us for trespassing."

"Think about what you're saying, though," Angel said. "They said they were kidnapped and held prisoner. We know what we saw in there and how ... how fucked up this is."

"It's gonna go to trial and we'll be on the hook testifying for god knows how long. Best case scenario."

"So you're saying you don't want to go to the police at all and don't want to help these people in spite of the fucked up stuff you saw?"

"The police are gonna confiscate our footage," Diya said.

Angel sighed. "We have to go, Diya."

Diya sighed and flopped back on the bed.

Kieron sat glassy-eyed beside Sophia. Ajay didn't look much more alert.

"Feels weird being treated like an object," Kieron said.

"Join the club," Sophia and Ajay said together and glanced warily at each other.

"I just want to go home. Either of you recognize where we are?" Sophia asked.

Kieron got up and rifled through the desk drawer. It was the only place in the small room to look before his search was over. "I thought there was supposed to be a phone book in these rooms."

Angel glanced back at him. "They don't even put phones in these rooms anymore." He reached into his pocket and tossed them a small, black rectangle. "Ya'll can use mine if you want."

Kieron caught it and frowned. "The fuck is this?" With an accidental press of something, a screen covering the front surface lit up.

"Ooh." Sophia leaned toward him.

Brightly colored icons covered the screen in a grid. Not knowing what to do with the screen, Kieron touched it, and the screen changed.

"Like Star Trek: The Next Generation," Sophia whispered. "Where'd you get that?"

"Is there a map?" Kieron asked.

"Hey, Sima," Angel bellowed. "Where am I?"

The phone in Kieron's hand chirped and said aloud, "Here's a map of where you are." The screen changed to a map with a virtual pin on their motel. As Kieron tapped the screen, the picture shifted until he learned how to zoom out.

"We're pretty far from the city," Sophia said.

Kieron swiped again, this time bringing a slide down from the top. "Oh, what'd I do?"

"Is that the date?" Ajay said, grabbing the phone. "September 26, 2020. Is that the actual date?"

Angel and Diya silently glanced at each other. For a long time, no one said anything.

"What year do you think it is?" Diya asked.

"1990," Ajay said.

"89," Sophia and Kieron both answered.

"You said you were only in there a few weeks," Angel said, an expression of new horror shadowing his face.

"It might have been a little longer," Sophia said. "We didn't have any way of telling time."

"But it sure as shit wasn't thirty years," Angel said.

Diya swiped through her own phone. "Maybe you were all in suspended animation." She approached the bed and sat beside Sophia. "We had these pictures from before. I don't know how to explain what I saw, but that would do it. The costumes were still in the museum, but the statues were gone."

Sophia kept her eyes on the screen as photos of herself flashed by. Photos of Josh posing on a platform.

"Oh, Josh... He's still in the woods somewhere. If we go back—"

Ajay patted her arm, shaking his head. "He got another way out."

"What do you mean?"

"Last night. I met up with him in the woods, and someone else was out there and he went with them."

"So shouldn't we stay where they can find us?"

"Demetri's out there too," Ajay said. "It's not safe. Josh left with the car because we had to do something. Get away from him, I mean. I stayed behind so I could tell you all we'd found help, but then I ran into these people."

"Well, where were they going?" she asked. "Are they waiting for us?"

Ajay shook his head.

"So he's just gone." A ball of anger and disappointment flared in her chest. The only reason Josh wouldn't have insisted Ajay go instead would be if he hadn't wanted to see her again.

"These pictures are contraband," Diya said, awkwardly trying to reign in control of the conversation. "Photography was strictly forbidden when the museum was open, and the crazy lady who owned the place is still chasing people on internet forums issuing cease and desist letters to anyone posting too much information." She kept swiping. "Which is why Angel and I are having such a conflict right now. I've never posted these pictures anywhere."

"So she definitely won't go after us with our detailed postmortem," Angel scoffed.

Diya ignored him. "I was about ten years old when I took these. Totally flew under her radar because she wasn't concerned about a kid looking for her parents. My parents weren't even there. It was such a scam. Anyway, I just turned off my flash and waited till no one was looking." She swiped a few more times. "Scanned the prints into my phone last night."

"I don't understand what I'm looking at. How do you have pictures of Sophia and Kieron?" Ajay asked, crowding in. "Everyone but me, really."

"Well, I don't know how it happened," Diya said, "but obviously the statues were you."