Nora hit the floor with a loud and painful thud.
She laid on the cold cement floor for a few minutes and stared at the ceiling until her eyes adjusted to the dark, then she sat up, looked around and rubbed her head.
"Hello?" she called into the darkness. "Is anyone else here?"
"Hello!" Another girl's voice echoed. "Hello!"
Nora followed the sound of the voice down a dark hallway and to another dungeon-like room in the back.
Inside were eight people huddled around a candle.
When Nora walked in, they looked up at her with shocked expressions.
"Who are you?" asked a woman, who had to be Joann.
Nora cleared her throat and said, "Nora...Nora Armstrong."
"How did you get down here?" asked a young girl, Nora guessed was Peggy.
"I was swallowed up by a big hole in the ground. Just like you were."
Everyone gasped when Nora said that.
"How did you know about that?" asked another girl.
Nora sighed and sat down in front of the two families.
"You're all characters in a book that my Great-Aunt Ivy wrote, but the book is unfinished so basically I am here to finish the story and save your lives."
"We can't come with you!" Martha shouted. "We're chained up in here? Don't you think we would have tried to get out already?"
Nora felt her face flush. "Sorry...I didn't think of that! I don't know how to help you now...who chained you up?"
"Who do you think?" Bridget grumbled.
"Our mother," Peggy said.
Nora sighed and looked up at the dark ceiling, trying to think of what she could do. She ran her fingers through her hair and felt something stuck in it. She pulled whatever it was out of her hair and realized that it was the bobby pin that she had forgotten to take out of her hair before she went to bed.
She looked at the pin, then at the locks on the chains.
"Maybe I can pick the locks with this." Nora knelt down in front of Peggy. She picked up the lock then stuck the bobby pin in the bottom of it and wiggled it a round until it broke lose.
Peggy jumped up joyfully. "Thank you, Nora!"
Nora smiled even though she knew no one would be able to see her face in the darkness. "Do you have a bobby pin in your hair?" she asked Peggy, who quickly pulled a pin out of her hair as well.
"Great! Now just do what I did and jiggle the pin around in the key hole until the lock breaks!"
The two girls hurried to get everyone free from the locks then Mr. Martin grabbed the candle they were sitting around and led the group out of the room and down the even darker hallway.
They tried not to make any noise, but the walls were damp and moldy. Henry, who couldn't see, accidentally tripped Louise and she landed face first against a patch of mold on the wall. She was very allergic to mold and immediately started to sneeze loud, long sneezes.
"Louise! Shh!" Frannie tried to quiet her sister, but she couldn't keep the sneezes in.
Joann made her way through the dark over to her daughter and pulled her away from the wall and tried to cover her nose with a tissue so she wouldn't sneeze, but it was too late.
Far down the hall, a door slammed loudly.
Everyone stopped in their tracks and waited in completely silence in the pitch dark hallway. Footsteps fast approached them. They got closer and closer until a tall, dark figure appeared right behind them.
"Run!" Martha screamed.
And so they turned and ran away shrieking.
