I am a first-time offender sentenced to community service in Angeles National Forest. The government is funding something extremely illegal here [Part 1]

By 2am we were about six miles into the woods. I didn't understand what a group of ex-cons and the trail maintenance team of a state forest were going to accomplish out here in the middle of the night, but I kept my mouth shut. The judge had given me a deal and this was still a million times better than jail. And I had gotten somewhat sober in my time here. I didn't think that was even possible for me.
As I fantasized about my ****ty life marginally improving I noticed a faint glow of light in the distance. We walked toward the glow in silence for another half mile and soon our group was lead into a clearing where teams of rangers set up floodlights and cameras. They were all pointing in the same direction, and there was a buzzing that sounded like drones. I spotted one hovering about 30 feet in the air above us. With the floodlights on us it looked almost like daylight.
How I got here is not so great. I am an addict, I was prescribed oxycontin for back pain after an injury about six years ago and that lead me down the path of addiction. I have lost almost everything and everyone in my life. When I was arrested I was homeless, and I had two bags of heroine with a red Justin Bieber face stamped on them in my purse.
The judge took pity on me, I think because I was so young and it was my first offense. Aka the first time I got caught. Or maybe it was because I looked good that day or have great tattoos. Idk. They let me into some new rehab program in lieu of jail time, but if I re-offend I'm going to jail for sure.
The program they have out here is honestly great. It's like a sleepaway camp for junkies. They kept me in detox for two weeks, then taught me to repair some of the mist nets they use to track the local bird population. Hooked me up with a Suboxone script. I think they're gonna send me to therapy at some point. We do a lot of outdoor ****, they taught me to light a fire. And I'm from LA so I really didn't know any of it. The other two "convicts" in the program seem nice, to be honest we haven't been able to interact much. They keep us separated. It's really a wonderful program they have here that gives people a second chance before they get destroyed by the system.
"Three minutes, clear!" Someone shouted at us, like an order. At this point I still had no clue what was going on. My group was ushered off to the side of the clearing. As we stood at the edge of the forest, with floodlights on nothing, I noticed a small gathering of men to my right that looked extremely out of place.
All of them were old, in their sixties or seventies at least. Many of them had thick glasses, with expensive-looking designer frames.
They all wore full suits with ties, and extravagant jewelry all with the same kind of vibe. Lots of gold rings and watches, with intricate symbols I didn't recognize. Their suits were weirdly spotless. Like no way they had walked six miles into this forest and their shoes were that clean.
For some reason my eyes were drawn back to the blank spot in the forest. It was just an empty field bathed in light. I felt the talking die down and I could feel everyone looking at the spot with me, but I didn't look away to check. It wasn't that I necessarily wanted to look, I was really curious about those rich dudes, but I kind of felt compelled to look. Like something was forcing me to look right at nothing. Right as I started to fight the urge, I felt something I can't explain. It was like the air moved, but it wasn't a breeze. It felt like the air was making me disassociate with the universe.
I remember, right before I saw it, feeling just so unbelievably sad.
The air somehow stretched back, I could feel it, I can't explain it but you can feel it when it happens. And I saw something.
A house appeared in the middle of the clearing, like flipping on a light switch. And let me tell you, it's ****ing weird to see an entire house appear right in front of you. "Oh, ****." I heard myself say. A few people around me expressed some shock, but mostly no one said anything.
The house was ancient, with a vague Colonial Revival shape like you might see in the northeast US. It looked like it might have been painted white at some point. The windows were impossibly black. Even with the floodlights lighting the thing up like a stadium I couldn't make out any of the interior at all. The only color on the house was a dark green ivy that engulfed half of the house's left side. Like the ivy was fighting the house. Looking at the house felt like another world. Like I was sad, but I couldn't look away. It felt evil.
"What the **** is that?" I heard myself say. A man with red hair I had never seen before approached my group. "You all three see the house?" The others and I nodded, uncertain. "Good. Come with me." He started walking toward the house. I looked to the other two who began following, hesitantly. "I am not going in that house." I said, not taking my eyes off the eerie structure. I wasn't going in but I wanted to get a closer look, the house was drawing me closer.
"I'm the only person out here that cares about your lives at this moment." said our new guide. That made me stop walking.
"The people behind us could care less if you live or die, and right now you are in a lot of danger." The red haired man spoke quickly. "You are all going into that house right now, or the people behind us will shoot you." I tore my gaze away from the house. "What?" I looked behind us, but I couldn't see anything beyond the floodlights. "What the ****? What the ****?" I said. The other two in my group, a man and woman, were cursing as well.
"I'm sorry, but you must listen to me. You all must go into the house now, or you will die. This isn't a joke, this is real. I've seen a lot of people die here trying to run. Please don't. I know it's hard to understand, but we'll be able to explain what's happening when you leave the house.
Nothing in the house can harm you, do you understand? The house isn't real."
"What the **** is going on?"
The red haired man ignored us and held out cell phones. "Take these, they have GPS, and keep your flashlights on. There are no lights in the house, as far as we know." The man next to me was livid. "Bro what the ****!" The red haired man held up the phones desperately.
"Please." The man looked at us, exasperated. Something about the way he looked at us. This was real. We took the phones. I tried to get a read on the other two. We had never been allowed to interact together so far. The man was definitely scared. The woman shared a look of complete what the **** with me.
The red haired man walked up to the front door of the house. Up close I could see remnants of white paint peeling everywhere revealing dark weathered-brown wood underneath, like wounds. Our guide put his hand over the black doorknob and spoke into a walkie talkie, almost in a whisper. "I'm opening the door." He turned the knob, and the door opened without a sound. I couldn't make out anything inside the house at all. "What so we just go in? That's it? What the **** is this?!"
The man looked scared. "Hurry. You're nothing to them. We bring people here every few months. At least in the house you have a chance." I glanced behind us again. Nothing but floodlight. I was scared. And there was definitely something pulling me now toward the house now, like an energy. It felt like a deep lump in my chest, like holding back tears, and the only thing that helped was moving closer to the door.
"Do you feel that?" Someone said.
I looked into the house. I could barely make out the floorboards of the first room. It was so dark, even with light shining directly into the house.
"This is ****ed up." The woman to my left said. Then she bravely walked into the house and disappeared into the darkness. I followed her, and the man followed behind me.
The first step into the house was like walking into a sensory deprivation chamber. It felt like I went deaf the second I entered, I've never encountered silence like that, before or since.
And it was so dark. It made the walk in the forest feel like an afternoon stroll. It was a giant shroud that engulfed us in a way that just felt unnatural. Our flashlights, which were fine for the night hike, somehow seemed less able to penetrate the darkness of the house.
"As Spongebob would say, this is advanced darkness." I said. No one responded.
There was nothing inside. The floors were a dark wood, the ceilings plain. It was just an empty house. There was no furniture, the only distinctive quality was the molding on the ceiling, a twisting ivy. From the entryway I could vaguely make out three separate hallways that lead further in. The front door behind us remained open. I don't think any of us felt safe closing it. I watched the red haired man walking away from us.
"What's your name?" The woman asked me. "Maddy." "I'm Brittany, and you're?" Looking to the man. "Trey." He said.
"What are we-?" The man froze. I watched his expression change. Something made his eyes widen and his mouth open. I held my flashlight up to him. "You ok?"
Trey was shaking, looking straight into a dark hallway to our left. Brittany and I both shined our lights in the direction, but there was nothing there. Without warning, without changing his terrified expression, Trey exploded into a full run into the dark hallway in front of him.
"Trey! What's happening?!" I didn't see anything behind him in the house, it was just us. He was running for no reason. I chased after him a few feet but stopped, I didn't want to get lost. I could see the light from his flashlight bouncing down the long hallway. It seemed impossibly long, like the length of the football field. "Trey!" I called after him. He already sounded so far away. His flashlight was a speck in the black and his footsteps just kept going. The house was endless on the inside.
"Okay **** this" Brittany said. "I'm not gonna be in this house this is a trick. they're not gonna shoot us." Brittany turned and walked toward the front door.
Only the front door wasn't behind us, it was another hallway. We were in an empty room with hallways in four directions. The front door had moved, somewhere else. "****!" Brittany screamed. Honestly at this point I started panicking, but I tried to chill. "Okay stop. We're trapped in a house. we don't have to lose our ****. This is obviously some kind of weird trick by the program to get us to stay straight or something."
I vaguely wondered if Brittany was an actor and I was on some kind of Truman show type thing. But she seemed so scared. "Which way should we go?" Brittany looked at me, pleading. I flashed the hallways with my light, but they all looked the same. "I really don't know." I said. "Flip for it?".
Brittany's gaze had locked on one of the empty hallways and I watched her face slowly open up, just like Trey's had a second ago. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened in a silent scream.
"Brittany? What's going on? Are you okay?" Brittany's mouth was open, but she didn't speak.
She dropped her flashlight and started running away just like Trey, fast, into the house.
I didn't chase her.
I stood there for a while, trying not to flip out. Within a minute, I couldn't hear Brittany, I couldn't hear anything. The house was dead quiet.
Then-
"Maddy?"
I turned around, startled, and the world stopped.
In front of me was... a nightmare. My absolute worst, most painful memory. It couldn't be real. I knew it wasn't real, because he was dead. But somehow, In front of me, was my father, same tattoos, same face, same everything. He looked just like he had right before he died.
My father reached out-
"Maddy?"
I backed away. "No. No, no no no no." I was saying in my head, but I couldn't speak. My mouth wouldn't move. I was trying to scream but I couldn't make a sound.
He took a step toward me.
My father had committed suicide eight years ago when I was thirteen. He shot himself in the head. This wasn't him. Something was happening that I can't explain, but whatever was in front of me wasn't my father.
As he walked toward me, I noticed a gun in his hand.
I ran. Somehow I kept the flashlight in my hand, I picked a hallway and ran. I heard a gunshot behind me. I kept running.
A few hundred steps into the hallway there was a door to my left, I took it. Inside was an empty room, with a sink and cabinets, and another door. I flew through it into another room, blank like the entryway, with more doors. I ran through rooms, mostly bare, opening and closing the doors behind me trying to distance myself and confuse whatever was behind me. The house was endless blank rooms.
I found myself in a circular room with two doors and a cabinet with a mirror. As I ran toward a door at random I caught my reflection in the mirror. I don't know if it was my imagination, I didn't stop or anything, but I noticed my hair was red in the reflection. My hair isn't red, it's black. I processed this all in less than a second.
When I opened the next room, I felt immediately cold. My eyes widened and my mouth opened, it felt like someone had poured liquid ice down my spine and I couldn't move. And I was terrified. The room in this house wasn't blank.
It was my childhood living room. Down to the furniture, the family photos on the walls, even the weird lived-in smell that I had only ever identified as "my" house.
In the middle of the room was my father. He met my gaze, put the gun to his head, and shot himself. Blood splattered onto my face, into my mouth. That woke me up. Unfrozen. I screamed.
I flung myself out of the room, through doors at random, wiping at my face, crying, screaming. To my left is a room with a large couch, to my right, spiral staircase. I take the stairs, grab another door. I'm in another room now, like a kitchen with no appliances doors on each side. I hear another gunshot a few rooms behind me. A doorknob catches my eye, it has green ivy on the keyhole. I open it. Behind it is a forest, and floodlights. The entrance. I sprint for the light.
I'm blind for a second. The light is overwhelming even though I'm trying with every fiber of my being to see and to escape, I can't see anything. As my eyes adjust I see swarms of people surrounding me. Apparently they're medics, they lift me onto a gurney and immediately take my life signs. I'm not proud of it but I couldn't keep it together. I was sobbing.
"What the **** was that?! WHAT THE **** WAS THAT?!"
I was yelling and crying. It was ugly. In front of me the red-haired man appeared, concerned.
"Maddy! Maddy what happened?!"
"What the **** is this?! What the **** are you doing here?!"
I was traumatized. I felt like I had died.
"Maddy please, we need you to tell us exactly what happened to you in the house."
"**** you."
"Maddy please-" I was so full of hatred in that moment. I wanted to scream in his face.
I wanted him to die for what he had just put me through. But when I met his gaze, I softened. The red-haired man was crying too. Full on sobbing.
"Maddy you have to help us, we need you. The house has never let anyone out."


Source.