Readers vote on where this story goes next! Welcome to Briarwich. A sleepy coastal town with a dark history. You are Morgan, a college student on a boating trip with your four best friends. When you and your friends become stranded in Briarwich, you...
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The Knife
The handle of the lantern feels hot and greasy in your sweating palms. You gaze at its light, mesmerized by the undulating glow of the dancing flames. The drugs injected into your system creep into the edges of your consciousness, tickling the edges of your vision with a misty haze.
You have been faced with an impossible decision, one which you do not know if you are ready to make. Val is missing, but if you leave now without the knife, all of this will have been for nothing. You know where those children have gone, and the one thing they fear most is in your possession. With Camilla's lantern, you think you stand a chance of facing those kids and getting the knife back.
On the other hand, you have no idea where to begin looking for Val. Hell, you don't even know if she is still inside the hospital. You could waste time looking for her, not find her, and then end up empty handed after everything is said and done. You reason that Val is the by far the smartest of all of you. She braved Briarwich alone before, and she was the one who made it back to Bright Manor all on her own. In fact, if she were here right now, she would be the first to argue that the knife is too valuable to leave behind. You can imagine her, hands on her hips and her default serious expression, chastising you for not making the logical choice.
Straightening your back, you fix your eyes onto Malcom's and say, "I'm not leaving here without that knife. Come on, we have to go after those kids."
It shocks you how readily Malcom obeys your decision – how he doesn't for one second question the choice you have made. Without a word, he adjusts his arm around your waist with one hand and chokes his grip on the handle of the sledge hammer with the other.
"Well, we better hurry," he responds with grim determination.
The clang of metal on bone rings behind you. Natalie has taken a swing at one of the nurses and landed a stellar hit right across the she-thing's temple. The woman in the white dress topples over like a rag doll, eyes rolling back in her head, scalpel slipping from limp fingers and clattering to the floor. Blood begins to pool around the nurse's head the moment it settles on the floor – spreading like the petals of a crimson flower. The nurse's fingers twitch, desperately grasping for her fallen weapon despite the long narrow dent in her skull left there by the edge of Natalie's shovel. Slivers of ivory peak out from the gushing wound, remnants of the cracked orbital bone pushing the nurse's left eye ever so slightly askew.
Natalie's face is hard and unreadable, even as she turns to follow you and Malcom from the room. If she has any reservations about fighting to the death, they have been thoroughly buried under a mountain of adrenaline and fury.
Simon brings up the rear of the group, brandishing his crowbar like a club to keep the nurses at bay. The remaining nurses only follow you as far as the threshold to the hallway and then stop dead in their tracks. They stare at you dumb and doe eyed from the darkness, tilting their heads like confused puppies wondering where their favourite toys have been hidden. Then they seem to lose interest and shuffle back into the room with the same bored cadence you've seen in the night-staff nurses at real hospitals.
