The Museum of Clearwater Bay was said to hold many secrets; untold mysteries fished up from the deep by long-dead mariners over the course of many centuries. Even the tourists who flocked to the area were reluctant to visit, and the building itself - little more than a stone shack built on the side of the Clearwater River estuary - was falling into disrepair. If the council hadn't been totally dysfunctional they might have remembered to close it for health and safety concerns, but unlocked it remained, with little more than a rotting wooden sign above its uninviting red door. Inside, a dozen or so exhibits were carelessly arranged behind glass panels, with all manner of strange sea creatures and mysterious artifacts. An empty donation box, a few dusty old books, and a broken lamp rounded out the lackluster visitor experience.
On a gray and windy morning, five friends were walking along that very same estuary bank towards the shore.
"Why aren't we in school again?" asked Connor into the wind, his boring gray school uniform and usually neat, short red hair billowing out as he struggled against the strong air currents.
Dylan sighed and brushed his messy long blonde hair away from his face. "Don't you remember how Max and Chaz dumped your head into the toilet in the changing rooms after the last time we did PE class?" he called back to Connor "Do you really want to go back there?"
"Good point" sighed Connor, casting his sweet brown eyes downward. Like all of his friends, he never was any good at PE anyway.
"Besides, we're sort of the unofficial school nerd club, right?" added Jake, the shortest and youngest-looking of the group, with his distinctive jet black hair with a single pink streak running through it. "Didn't Principal Johnson say that all school clubs are entitled to a field trip once a year or something?"
"That was only official school clubs sadly" explained Mollie, the school's resident cosplay fanatic, whose short, chic brown hair seemed strangely unaffected by the heavy wind. Unfortunately, girls at Clearwater High had to wear skirts as part of their uniform, and Mollie was trying desperately to keep the wind from revealing too much of her legs.
"I hope we won't be in too much trouble if we're caught" mused Jake quietly to himself.
Somehow, Jake's voice travelled in the wind over to Dylan. "Trust me, it's better than being in a class with Max and Chaz" he said.
Brooke had been unusually quiet throughout the conversation, as though she were lost in thought. Everyone knew something was troubling her, but they could also tell she wasn't ready to talk about it yet. Her shoulder length brown hair kept blowing into her blue eyes, but she didn't even make an effort to brush it aside. She just kept walking forwards like an automaton, leading her other four friends behind her.
So it was surprising to the others when she suddenly stopped outside the museum.
"You okay, Brooke?" asked Mollie loudly over the howling wind. A few drops of rain were starting to fall from the sky, carried like bullets through the windy gray atmosphere.
Brooke turned around to her friends so she could speak to them more clearly. Her blue eyes seemed like they had been crying faintly while walking. "Maybe we could hide in here until the storm dies down?" she asked her friends.
Connor, Dylan, Jake and Mollie looked at each other anxiously. "Don't you know that museum's haunted?" asked Jake sweetly.
"Yeah, I've heard my family say there's strange sounds and lights in there at night" reported Dylan "It's not safe."
Just then, a thunderclap was heard and the rain began pouring down.
"Okay, anyone have a better idea?" asked Mollie.
Soon, all of the students gathered inside the dusty old room. The room felt cold, and the floorboards creaked as each of the students stepped on them with their school-uniform shoes. Outside, a constant pitter-patter of raindrops fell on the museum roof, and a loud whistle of wind echoed around the stone room.
"Looks like nobody's been in here for centuries..." said Dylan, wiping the dust off a glass panel to reveal a stuffed anglerfish staring back at him.
"This place gives me the creeps" remarked Mollie, whose hair had survived the wind but had now been slimed by a dangling squid tentacle from the roof.
"Yeah, there's got to be a better place than this to wait out the storm - isn't there a public toilet around here somewhere" said Jake, and as he did, a strange whisper seemed to fill the air. The sound of the whisper sent chills up the spines of seemingly everyone except Brooke.
Well, Brooke had always been the odd one. All of her friends were actually surprised that she wasn't a goth.
"I don't know what you scardy-cats are worried about" explained Brooke calmly "Hey, I think I found something cool!"
Everyone followed Brooke's finger to see a human skull left tidily on a shelf.
Everyone except for Brooke screamed.
"Let's get out of here!" said Connor, who turned to the door to exit - only to find it was now somehow locked.
Before he could alert the others to this fact however, Brooke picked up the skull.
"Oh come on, it's not a real skull" she laughed, and holding the jaw she began to recite her favorite Shakespeare play: "Alas, poor Yorick..."
Suddenly, blue tendrils jumped out of the skull like lightning bolts and enveloped all five of the young teenagers. They found themselves pulled at seemingly the speed of light towards the skull, their whole universe around them twisting. And then, with a twinkle and in an instant, all five kids were gone, completely vanished from this reality.
Meanwhile, Connor, Jake, Dylan, Brooke and Mollie were now all screaming as they tumbled through what seemed to be the eye of a blue hurricane. In the vortex surrounding them they saw nothing except flashes of blue light, and an infinite void beyond. Brooke seemed the most shocked of all, her face pale with fear as the teenagers felt as though they were falling from the very edge of the universe. At the base of the blue twister, the group could see a stunning white light, so bright they had to shield their eyes from it.
"AAAAAAAAA!" yelled Connor.
"MUMMY!" yelled Jake.
"HELP! ANYONE OUT THERE?" yelled Dylan.
"THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT BROOKE!" yelled Mollie "I SHOULDN'T HAVE TRUSTED YOU!"
"I'M SORRY!" yelled Brooke.
And then, the bright white light enveloped all of them, and they all passed out.
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