“Come on, Nat!” Bailey whined, tossing her blonde hair, “You never do anything fun.”

The rest of the girls rolled their eyes and scrolled through the channels for the eighth time that night, Avery was counting. The four best friends were slouched on various blankets they’d found around Natalie’s house and had dragged downstairs. It was the middle of summer, and the girls were bored out of their minds.

“Bailey, you know I have softball tomorrow, and I don’t want to be tired,” Natalie argued wearily.

Natalie was easily one of the best athletes in the state of South Carolina, and always seemed to have a meet, championship, or practice the next day. Bailey, on the other hand, despised any kind of sport, and spent her free time in McClellanville theater. In fact, the four friends were nearly all complete opposites. Natalie was the athlete, Bailey was the drama queen, Kara was the music lover, and Avery was the smart one.

“Plus,” added Avery, “that amusement park was shut down for a reason. It’s unsafe, plus it’s really scary.”

“My mom said I can’t go near it anyway,” Kara concluded, as though that settled the matter.

Bailey rolled her eyes and leaned back into the couch. Her friends sighed in relief, thinking she’d given up on going to the abandoned amusement park down the street.
McClellanville was a very small town, and rumors spread faster than Natalie could run. Once the park was shut down for safety reasons, stories circulated around the population of the town, and the most popular was that the park was haunted. The legend went that on a hot summer night, a teenage boy committed a gruesome suicide in the House of Mirrors, and on humid nights in July, you can hear his screams from the amusements park.
“So, what you’re telling me is that you’re too scared to go,” Bailey spoke after a moment in a singsong, challenging voice.
Three pairs of offended eyes met her comment.
“We’re not scared, there’s just solid reasoning not to go,” Natalie snapped back.
“There was solid reasoning that you wouldn’t win that track meet over in Bennettsville, but you did, and broke three records in the process,” Bailey retorted.
The four girls sat in silence for a moment before Bailey spoke again.
“I dare you,” she finished.
Moments after those three words escaped Bailey’s mouth, the four girls stood in front of the broken gate leading to the dark amusement park.
“This isn’t a good idea, Bailey,” warned Avery, twisting her fingers together nervously.
“Too late,” Bailey laughed, already pulling the gate up.
The friends stepped inside the gate, and hadn’t even been in for a whole minute when a loud, metallic bang echoed throughout the abandoned grounds. The iron gate that guarded the entrance to the park had clanged to the ground and locked.

Natalie, Avery, and Kara all turned to glare at Bailey. Natalie rushed to the heavy, iron gate and attempted to yank it up, but the gate stayed put.

“This is all your fault, Bailey!” Natalie screamed in fury, her messy, dirty-blonde hair streaming back from her angry face in the summer night’s breeze.

“Yeah, well you guys should know better than to let me do something like this!” Bailey hollered, equally angry.

Avery sighed and looked around logically, “Guys, we’re not getting back out until morning, let’s just find somewhere to sleep,” she said, stepping in between the two bickering girls.

“Whatever,” both friends muttered, eyeing each other with annoyance.

Bailey, Natalie, and Avery walked around the park in the darkness, before Avery stopped in front of the House of Mirrors.

“Guys,” said Avery urgently, but her two friends continued walking.

“Guys!” she said with more concern in her voice.

“What?” Natalie asked grudgingly.

“Where did Kara go?” Avery asked, worry etched on her face.

The three turned around, and looked behind any signs or objects their friend could have hidden behind. Finally, after a quick search of the area, Bailey began to panic.

“Kara, Kara! KARA?” shrieked Bailey, her lone voice sounding lost in the huge, empty grounds.

“Just stop, we’re not going to find Kara,” came Natalie’s even voice.

“How can you give up like that? Don’t you care about her?” Bailey yelled furiously.

Suddenly, a short scream came from the House of Mirrors behind the arguing girls.

“Nat, Bailey, help me!” Avery screeched from the maze.

“Avery!” Natalie and Bailey cried in unison.

They peered into the mirrors, where a tall, looming, masked figure was dragging a struggling Avery across the floor. Both girls stood frozen in horror for a second, staring at what they believed was a myth used to scare little brothers and sisters. The only thing visible on the man was his pale, skeletal hands, bare, filthy feet, and his two black slits in his mask for eyes. He turned a corner, disappearing out of sight with Avery.

Finally snapping out of their trance, Bailey and Natalie ran into the maze, following Avery’s screams as they got more and more distant, before all they could hear was hazy struggling and a faint shriek. An earsplitting bang came from a spot below the floor, and it resounded off the mirrors around the two girls left.

Bailey frantically looked down, then up to her sobbing, make-up smeared face reflected in the funhouse mirrors.

“I’m sorry, Natalie,” she whispered, then more quietly, “and Kara and Avery.”

Natalie sunk to the floor next to her best friend, “It’s okay,” she whispered back.

Again, from the floor below them, a loud crash shook the ground, and heavy footfalls stomped up what sounded like stairs, and the rhythmic steps were growing closer and closer, until the floor shuddered with each sound.

“Run,” was all Natalie could utter, and they did.

Panting, Bailey and Natalie tumbled into a food stand, gasping for air, and shaking in terror. The wood that constructed the shack was decaying, and a willowy spider danced across the dust covered floor, unaware of the danger outside it’s home.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Natalie cried.

“We’re going to,” Bailey said suddenly, her regular confidence back in her strong voice.

“How do you plan to do that?” Natalie asked nervously.

“I have my ways, Nat,” Bailey smirked, as she fixed her gaze on a rusty maintenance truck behind the shack.

They quit talking immediately as the heavy footsteps sounded outside their hiding place again, identical to the ones they heard plodding up the stairs in the funhouse. Natalie held her breath and prayed, while Bailey chewed off her perfectly manicured nails in silence. The footsteps passed by the hut, and the two best friends breathed again.

“Follow me,” Bailey hissed, slowly creeping out of the shack.

Natalie followed Bailey out of the stand and across a lone patch of sunburned grass to the truck parked in a dusty lot. The truck looked like it might fall off its wheels already, and both girls feared what would happen once the key was turned. Despite the idea of the floor falling out beneath her when she stepped in, Bailey still jumped into the truck’s driver seat and cautiously glanced out through the windshield and into the park.

“Bailey, something’s moving over there,” Natalie whimpered.

“Over where?” Bailey whispered.

“In the House of Mirrors!” Natalie hesitated a moment, “Hurry up!” she added.

Bailey was desperately trying to twist the key in the ignition, but all that resulted was a low hiss from the truck’s engine.

“Bailey, it’s moving!” Natalie muttered in a strangled voice, “Start the stupid truck!”

“It’s not going!” Bailey said frantically.

Natalie craned her neck to see the shadow, but there was no need to. Suddenly, she let out a scream that shattered Bailey’s focus on the key.

“Bailey! START THE TRUCK!” Natalie screamed, as the masked figure that had abducted two of her closest friend already slowly staggered to the the truck, not even forty feet away.
Natalie fumbled around the truck, hitting the front and back seat’s locks. The hulking figure was dressed in a ratted grey outfit, and darker stripes gave him the look of an escaped prisoner, and his black, gleaming, evil eyes glinted at them demonically.
“BAILEY!” Natalie shrieked, shaking as the figure limped closer.
“I’m trying!” Bailey sobbed, starting the car again and again.
Bailey had only learned how to drive a month ago, and knew only the basics of driving a car, let alone a huge truck. The grey clad figure was now only ten feet away from the driver’s side, and now Natalie could practically see a maniacal grin behind the mask to match the lopsided eyes and emaciated hands and feet.
Within second the pale hands were outside the window, yanking the handle, and causing the truck to creak with each tug.
“START THE TRUCK!” Natalie hollered, in hysterics while gripping her best friend’s arm in what she believed to be the last seconds of her life.
Finally, the beaten, maroon truck roared to life, and Bailey gave a breathy laugh before shifting into drive and slamming the gas pedal to the floor. The truck jolted forward and immediately sped out of the clutches of the masked man. Bailey and Natalie cheered as the truck zoomed down the path. The wooden fence attached to the locked gate was rapidly getting nearer, but Bailey still had her plan in mind. She pressed the pedal even harder, and with a look of determination, the truck crashed through the rotting boards and finally, after a night of horror, the two best friends were free.

Natalie and Bailey leaped out of the truck and sprinted the rest of the way back to Natalie’s house and dialed 911.

“I guess I’m not going to softball tomorrow,” Natalie panted.
***

“It has been five weeks since the tragic events that took place at the McClellanville County Amusement Park, which had been abandoned since the 1950’s, or so authorities and locals thought. Escaped mental patient, Mark Gaunt, has been living undetected in the park since 1988. After four years of solitude, four girls, Natalie Porter, Bailey Sams, Avery Johnson, and Kara Lee, broke into the park on July 8, around midnight,” the newscaster carried on, explaining the rest of the details that the gossip hungry locals thrived on.

The park had been searched and searched again since that hot summer night, but no trace of Avery, Kara, or their abductor had been found. Natalie and Bailey’s parents arrived the next morning after receiving word from the police about the night’s events, and both Bailey and Natalie were going to therapy to ease their paranoia and guilt. The case had become national news overnight, and the entire country was searching for Avery and Kara.

Despite the best efforts from police and citizens, neither Kara nor Avery were ever found. Years later, the case remained unsolved, providing no comfort for the family or best friends of the missing girls. Neither Bailey nor Natalie ever snuck out again, and Bailey even became a bit more tame.
Today, however, the only part of this story locals chat about when gossip is scarce are the rumors that brings kids to break into the park each summer. The legend now goes, on hot summer nights in July, if you go into the House of Mirrors after midnight, and scream into a mirror, Mark Gaunt will take you to his hiding spot, the spot that only Avery, Kara, Mark, and the list of missing McClellanville children know.