I opened it carefully. I listened. I remembered what happened with the window and didn't want it to repeat.
But it didn't help.
Behind the door, in the next room, they were sitting there, grinning horribly, waiting for me. Five creatures on large crates. Black emptiness in their eyes. Teeth sparse, but sharp and long. Dressed in torn white clothes. They stared at me and shook as if in some kind of fit. After a moment, I realized it was laughter.
I moved forward on legs that felt like cotton. Why couldn't I stop? Some foreign magic was controlling me. I was a sickly doll in someone's malicious hands.
I should never have stepped outside the door.
One of the creatures lifted a thin finger with a long nail and beckoned me.
What happened next became a new revelation of horror. The floor vanished under my feet. I rose into the air and flew toward the terrifying creature that had beckoned me. I drew closer to it. Still shaking with laughter, it touched me with its finger. It was like an icy knife stabbed through me. Cold spread through my body from the point of contact.
Energy: 8 (-1)
A new creature beckoned me with its finger. I flew toward it. Still laughing, it touched me with its finger in turn. Cold.
Energy: 7 (-1)
So, one by one, I drifted from one creature to the next. My life force was fading. I was trapped, with no way to escape.
Energy: 0 (-1)
Darkness. I wasn't breathing, wasn't moving. Only later did moonlight break through.
I was lying in bed. In the same bedroom. Moonlight outside the window.
Morale: 6 (-2)
Energy: 3 (+3)
Again, I approached the door. Behind it, a whisper:
"Well? Shall we repeat it?"
And a terrible, vicious scraping. They were scraping with their teeth! I realized that this time, if I went in, it would be much worse.
I was in the bedroom, with five monsters sitting in the next room.
I had to find another way out of this nightmare. I knew I couldn't go that way again, but I had no idea where else to go. But I was determined to figure it out.
Along the far wall of the bedroom stood a large wardrobe.
I opened its door.
It should have been filled with clothes, but inside there was only dark emptiness. It was calling to me, as if it knew I would enter anyway.
Pausing for a moment in thought, I entered the darkness.