The Old Broke Rancher Tries To Escape

I never was a fan of Halloween, for two very good reasons.  

The first is that I was raised in the prickly arms of the Catholic Church, for whom the devil is kind of persona non grata. As such, all of the devils and witches and vampires give me the willies, and when I see them the Catholic part of me starts to get all twisted up inside and pretty soon I feel like seeing if maybe we can't get a papal edict issued and maybe start up an inquisition or something. 

The other reason is a lot more personal, and believe me when I say I wouldn't reveal it to anyone but you, dear reader: I'm a little scaredy-cat.  

Not when it comes to lions, tigers, or bears, mind you. If it is my lot in life to be eaten by a bear, I'll march to that fate whistling a cheerful tune.  

If I were ever to see a ghost, or a demon, or a witch, or any of the other classic Halloween boogeymen, I'd check out right then and there.  

This unhappy secret of mine, which I implore you not to tell your friends, has caused me untold trouble in my life. Like the time that I took a date to The Exorcist in 1973 (or was it 1873?). I know that film tested the nerves of a lot of people in my generation, and I suspect that today's younger filmgoers probably can't quite see it with the same eyes as we did, but boy-oh-boy, was it scary. I left feeling I has seen something I shouldn't, and slept uneasily for a few nights. I'm just not that big a fan of Satan. 

For one, I like to try to back the winning horse, and all the schooling I've received has said that the smart money is on the other side. Plus, I just don't have that much in common with Old Scratch (the fact that I can sometimes be a little devil notwithstanding).

But it turns out my date had an even worse time of it, as she told me when we left. 

"What did you think," I asked. 

"It was ok, I guess," she said acidly, "except you gripped my wrist so hard I don't know if I'll ever get blood circulating again..."

"Aw geez, I did? I didn't even know I was doing it. Sorry."  

Needless to say, I never went on a date with her again. Nor did I ever watch The Exorcist II: The Heretic, Exorcist III: Legion, The Exorcist: The Beginning, or The Exorcist: Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist.  

If those around me, my children, for instance, have a taste for horror, it ain't because of me. 

So why, last weekend, did I find myself at a horror-themed escape house in Billings? And what, pray tell, is an escape house. Well, I'll tell you, but not without becoming a grumpy curmudgeon for a moment. I'm sure you're used to it. 

In my day, we escaped. We got in cars, on horses, even, sometimes, on sleds, and then we got out of our stuffy houses, away from the complicated tangles of our parents' lives. Now, however, it is judged fun to do and even worth paying for, to be locked in a room and watched by strangers as you try to get out. Where did we go wrong?

And then, because it's a Halloween escape room, or actually a series of rooms, the whole time you're trying to solve the puzzle you're also listening to someone make what are, presumably, monster noises at you.

So this is not my idea of fun, but I'm only one man, and there were six of us voting on what to do on our Billings weekend.  

"How about we go and pick up some Red Lobster and then see if we can check into the hotel early?"

"Dad, it's only 2 PM."

I was the only one who thought a nap and some scampi sounded better than being shrieked at as you try to get out of a locked room.

So, finding myself in a dimly lit room festooned with spiderwebs and fake blood, I instead turned the full power of my formidable mind to help solve the puzzles that would facilitate our escape. We had paid for an hour, but I figured that if I focused my keen mind on the task, I could get us all out there and that much closer to Red Lobster and the hotel in, say, fifteen minutes. 

That didn't last long. 

The first room had jars of fingers, eyes and ears, and somehow the number of each had some significance on what to input into a padlock. My son figured that out without much help from me. 

"Hey, did that painting's eyes move?" was pretty much my only contribution to that room. And, looking back, I'm not sure the painting's eyes did move, but my son sure rolled his eyes. 

The second room involved skeletal hands pointing at certain cards, and then rearranging sticks with the cards on them... I don't know. For my part, I was really getting into the spirit of being scared at that point. 

"You know what would happen if something caught fire in here?" I whispered to my brother and his wife, interrupting their cheerful discussion of the clues. "We'd go up like torches. They couldn't tell us apart except by our teeth."

They waved me off, so I tried my wife. 

"What kind of sprinkler system you think they got in here? Do you smell smoke?"

"Gary, cut it out, will you? We're trying to solve the riddle of the dead man's hand."  

Left to my own devices, I walked over to the corner of the room and tried to inspect the ceiling in the darkness. I became convinced it was full of asbestos and that our choices were to either burn to death or get mesothelioma.

"I need to escape," I muttered.  

Something kicked in. Something primal. I looked down at my hands, turning them over, wondering if I was prepared for what I would have to do.  

"I. Need. To. Escape."  

"What's that, dad?"

But I was beyond answering now, beyond rational discourse. It was only me and the door, and no goshdarn lock was going to stop me. No complicated skeleton puzzle. No playing card. I raised my foot and prepared to start kicking the door, nostrils flared, fists clenched. Something flashed before my eyes: it was Linda Blair, pea soup dribbling down her chin. My vision turned red. 

Luckily, someone was monitoring the escape room, and all the lights came up at once. They told us our hour was up.  

"Aw man," said my kids, unaware that I might have ended up on the evening news, become one of those hilarious emails you send to your friends.

In the parking lot, I surreptitiously checked my watch. It had only been 53 minutes. Someone had wisely decided to cut our session short.  

Finally at Red Lobster, I contemplated my brush with my old friend, fear. My wife knew something was up when I finished three buttered cheddar bay biscuits before my beer even came.  

"What are you doing," she whispered.  

"Celebrating our escape," I muttered.

I figured I was lucky I hadn't tried to hold her hand in there.