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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As the first day in Briarwich draws to a close, you stare up at the canopy top of your bed and will sleep to come. Try as you might, every time you close your eyes, you see the faces of the villagers – mad from starvation – breaking down and devouring the food they already know to be poisoned. Their eyes are wider than they have any right to be, as if they are trying to escape from their confines of their skulls.
When visions of dying villagers don't come unbidden, the thing in the orchard is more than happy to take their place. You get the sense that if you'd touched that tree for just a few more seconds, your mind would have been shattered beyond repair. It was only your fainting spell that saved you from being reduced to a gibbering ball of nerves. Maybe fainting had been your body's natural self-preservation instinct kicking in to spare you from that fate.
Still, you have not escaped completely unscathed. You feel the scars left on the fringes of your consciousness. Like any curious child, you've held your fingers to the flame and gotten a nasty burn for your trouble. The wounds are already beginning to heal, but it is a slow process, and you feel the scabs itching beneath the surface. They will be scars before long, no longer causing you pain, but also never disappearing altogether.
"You aren't going to sleep all day, are you?"
You shoot up in bed, tossing aside the covers. Eyes wide with terror, you are ready to fight with tooth and nail if that is what it takes. You frantically search the room for the source of the voice and find ... nothing.
The room is still and empty, apart from the mist outside causing subtle changes in the sunlight filtering through the terrace window.
Is it really morning? You wonder as your bleary eyes blink away the haze of sleep. Your tired mind tries to make sense of the startling amount of light in the room. Wasn't it just a minute ago that your bedroom was washed in the inky black of night? How could it be morning already? It certainly does not feel like you drifted off. You feel just as tired as when you crawled into bed, if not more so.
Groaning, you allow yourself to slump back into the overstuffed satin pillows. You pull the sheet over your eyes, not ready to face another day. Part of you is still hoping that this is all a bad dream, and that soon you will wake up and be back on the Ursa heading back to Halifax where your trip began all those weeks ago.
I must be going nuts already, you figure. Why else would you be hearing phantom voices, or was it a memory? You vaguely remember being roused from your sleep by one Natalie Mayflower the morning before your arrival.
There is no point in putting off the inevitable. You drag yourself away from the warm cocoon of fine sheets and comforters and shuffle barefooted across the ice-cold parquet flooring. There are a pair of slippers and a long wool housecoat draped on the chair in front of the dressing mirror – courtesy of Camilla. You slip them on and attempt to bring order to your atrocious bedhead by combing your hair with your fingers.
