Proceed to the stairs

From Create Your Own Story

You decide to proceed to the stairs. No way you're staying in here any longer than needed. What if Walfreid comes back to his grave?

You walk across the room. The stairs lead up to a huge stone door. A rusty lock holds it shut. You might be able to smash it if you had something sufficiently heavy. It's then that you hear the scraping of stone against stone. You turn. One of the coffin lids is moving. Pale fingers reach up and push it back. Then another lid starts to scrape, then another. The first vampire climbs out of her coffin. She was beautiful in life, and she's beautiful in death, if you like blondes with red pupiless eyes and deathly white skin.

She laughs throatily and advances toward you. By now some of the others have crawled out of their coffins, too.

"Stand back!" you shout "I have a holy symbol!"

The woman stops. Her eyes flick to an intense blue. "And you think that's going to stop all of us? I think you should take it off . Don't you agree?" A chorus of agreement murmurs behind her. You can feel the suggestion in your brain, but you remember this trick from before. You break eye contact and look down. The suggestion lessens in intensity, but your mind is being buffetted from all sides. You might be able to fight one vampire this way, but this many is going to be difficult. It feels like you're on novocaine, or in one of those dreams where you can't move. Your neck itches. That chain has been weighing it down for some time. You'll get a headache soon if you keep it on. Why am I even wearing this? you think. You start to take it off. Something in the back of your head screams that you don't really want to do that. Didn't I need to keep this on? You can't remember why, though. You ignore the nagging feeling and tug the chain off, dropping it to the ground.

"That's more like it," the blonde says cheerily. "Now that you have that nasty necklace off, why don't you come over here and join us?" You can't remember why you found her intimidating before. She seems quite nice. Some of her friends are looking at your rather hawkishly, though. It makes you slightly uneasy.

"I need to leave," you say. "But I can't remember why. Can you show me the way?" You come down the stairs to speak to her face to face.

"Why don't you stay? You can stay forever ," she says. She bites into your neck, and you suddenly remember why you didn't like her. Unfortunately, that revelation comes a bit too late.

You have died.