Chapter Eleven: Please, Don’t Be a Vampire

“How do we get upstairs?” Antoine asked. He banged his fist against the stone door.

“There’s a stairway that was roped off in the showroom,” Camden suggested.

“No, wait,” Anna said. “We have to figure out what we’re up against. We can’t just go running off after them.”

“It’s got Kimberly,” Antoine said. He began walking back toward the door separating the showroom from the main hall. His foot was out of commission, but he tried to move on it anyway. I could see the pain in his face.

I went to his side to help him move, but he pushed me away.

“I got it,” he said. “Just give me a second.”

Meanwhile, Camden had sat down at a table in the main hall and was busy trying to interpret the book that he had picked up from the library. He was furiously moving between pages of the Latin-to-English dictionary, interpreting the tome as quickly as he could.

“Don’t read any of the Latin out loud, and you probably shouldn’t read it directly translated either. Just summarize it. You don’t want to trigger a magic spell or something,” I offered. Evil Dead, anyone?

“I really don’t think it’s that kind of book,” he said. “It reads like an academic text, even though it’s complete nonsense. It presents itself as if this is science, something about creating a substance called the Mirror of Stars,” Camden responded. He leafed through the dictionary; his fingers were working as quickly as they could.

“What does the Mirror of Stars do?” Anna asked. “Can you tell us that?”

“It seems to be a substance that can capture or harness a human soul,” Camden answered.

“OK, but why would you need to harness a human soul?” Anna asked.

I could answer that one.

“Communicating with the dead, using it to power magic, using it to summon a demon or to breathe life into something,” I suggested. “What can’t you use a human soul for?”

Camden largely ignored our conversation as he worked. His head was shaking as he worked through it. Something about the book must have not sat right with him.

“It doesn’t say what you would need a soul for, but it repeats how dangerous this process is,” Camden said.

That makes sense. Separating the soul from the body is literal murder.

“Well, keep working on it. There must be something in there that will help us or else your power wouldn’t have led you to it,” Anna said. “Did you see any of its tropes?” she asked, turning to me.

I shook my head. “Nothing. It was there and gone too quickly,” I answered, though it shamed me to say it.

“The only thing you’re here to do, and you can’t do it because it was too quick?” Antoine said. He gripped onto the table he was liable to break it.

“Well, if I had known that the monster was going to attack at that exact moment, I might have been ready,” I said. “Let’s not forget that I wasn’t the only one caught off guard.” I gestured to his injured foot.

That was the wrong thing to say. Antoine got up as if to challenge me, but the pain in his foot brought him right back down.

“This is happening because you treated this like a game,” Antoine said. “Kimberly could be dead.”

“No, this is happening because you got catfished and made it our problem,” I said. I’m not usually one for a fist fight, but I wasn’t going to take blame for this.

“Stop,” Anna said. “This is getting us nowhere.”

She got between us. “Do you have any idea what this thing is or what it might do to Kimberly?”

“Clearly, it’s trying to steal her soul,” I said, pointing to the book. “Could be a cult. I’m not even willing to rule out a vampire at this point because traditionally vampires practice black magic, and that book looks like black magic.”

The truth is the cult angle didn’t make sense. If it was a cult, then we would have met some of the members by now. It made no sense for them to be introduced this far into the story. Not to mention, Kimberly’s kidnapper moved far too quickly to be a normal human.

At that moment, a scream sounded in the distance.

“Kimberly!” Antoine yelled. He jumped to his feet, ignoring the pain and stumbled toward the sound of the scream.

“No, that wasn’t Kimberly,” Anna said. “That sounded like Judy.”

She was right.

Antoine stopped and grabbed on to the back of a bench that was placed in the middle of the main hall. “I guess that means she’s not a vampire’s familiar, then, doesn’t it?” Antoine asked sarcastically.

I didn’t say anything, but the answer was no, it didn’t really mean much. If anything, it was great misdirection that could set up a twist ending, but I wasn’t going to say that out loud.

“Okay, with Kimberly gone and the NPC with three Plot Armor gone, that means I’m the next target,” I said. “I have a plan, but it’s going to sound crazy.”

“What’s your plan?” Anna asked.

I retrieved my tickets from my pocket and held up my most recent acquisition, the Oblivious Bystander. The ability was designed as a joke, I think, but its impact would be incredible if I could use it right. With this ability, monsters and killers won’t attack you as long as you can pretend that you have not yet noticed them. I’d seen this exact gimmick in multiple movies, sometimes used to get a laugh and other times used to heighten the tension.

A hapless character goes about their business while the monster lurks in the background. They don’t get attacked until they actually see the enemy. It usually only lasts for a single scene and the character ends up dying anyway.

But what if I could use it to make myself invincible while I scoped out the enemy tropes with my Trope Master ability?

“I just need to go off separate from the group and wait for whatever this thing is to get near me. If I can ignore it long enough, I might be able to look at its tropes and get some idea of what it is. If I see anything, I’ll scream it out before it takes me,” I said.

Anna looked at me. “Are you sure that will work?” she asked.

“No,” I answered. But it didn’t really matter. I was getting attacked no matter what. Kimberly proved that. Being in the group wasn’t going to save me.

“It’s up to you three,” I said. “Camden, you’ve got to figure out why that book is important. There has to be something in there.”

He nodded.

I tried to put on a brave face and sound the way I thought brave people sounded, but the truth is, I had another reason for leaving the group. Ever since I got the Oblivious Bystander ticket, all I could think about was how I might be able to use it to prevent myself from getting killed.

I had one problem: if I was in a group, whenever a monster came, I couldn’t ignore it no matter what direction I looked. I’m still going to hear the people around me screaming and reacting to the monster’s presence. There’s no way I can pretend that I didn’t notice the monster when everyone around me has. The best way for this gimmick to work would be for me to be off on my own.

I had visualized it in my head constantly ever since we got to Dyer’s Lodge. I needed this to work. I summoned whatever courage I had and walked away from my friends.

“Don’t go too far,” Anna said. “If something happens, just know that we’re going to try to rescue you.”

Maybe I’ll be the one rescuing you, I thought. I gave her a smile and said, “Thank you,” before turning out of the main hall and into the showroom.

The hidden stairway had gone upward. It seemed to me that the best direction to go to scope out our hidden enemy was also upward. Antoine had the right idea on that part. If I remembered correctly, all that was upstairs were rooms that were mostly used for storage. Guests of the museum couldn’t go up there. I didn’t even know if it was safe or if the floor would give out underneath me.

I got to the back of the showroom and found the large staircase that wound up and around to the upstairs. I picked up the red rope that had been used to block it off and ducked underneath.

The needle on the plot cycle was currently on the rebirth phase. We were supposed to be spending this time gathering the information we needed to go on the offensive.

By that metric, everything was going according to plan. But still, my feet felt as heavy as lead. My heart was pounding out of my chest.

On my way through the showroom, I grabbed a little map of the castle. It was an essential part of my plan. I opened it up in front of me and read it by the dim yellow lights that had been installed in the castle.

I didn’t actually need the map, but my thought was if my eyes were focused on the map and I could hold it out in front of me, then perhaps I could believably portray that I didn’t see anything whenever the master came for me. It’s goofy, I know, but the Oblivious Bystander trope came from campy horror movies and this strategy would work in a campy horror movie.

But what if I heard the monster first? I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t noticed it if it was making noise. In the silent upstairs hallway, I felt as if my ears were superhuman. Every creak and howl of the wind sounded like a footstep behind me. But I had a plan for sound too.

I started to talk to myself.

“Oh, so this is where the Halle family grew up,” I said. “Sure is a nice castle. Wish I could have grown up in a castle just like this one…”

And I continued blathering about anything and everything I could think of because if I was talking, then I couldn’t hear someone coming behind me, or at least I could pretend like I hadn’t heard them. It wasn’t the most elegant solution, but the Oblivious Bystander wasn’t the most elegant ability.

As I was walking through the upstairs of the castle, I was passing by door after door. I didn’t want to stop to try to get into any of the rooms because then I would have to let go of the map, my cover.

Truthfully, it didn’t matter if I got into any of the rooms. I was only doing this to try and draw the monster to me. I wasn’t trying to find it. If my theory was right, it didn’t matter where I was. Our enemy would make its way to me.

I watched the needle on the plot cycle as it slowly moved toward Second Blood. I started to wonder why Judy’s kidnapping hadn’t counted as being second blood, but Kimberly’s kidnapping did count as First Blood.

Did that mean that Kimberly had been killed, but Judy hadn’t? Would my capture count as Second Blood, or would it simply be another event inside of the rebirth phase?

Every time we asked the other players questions about how the game worked, we would get the suggestion that we would “figure it out” once we started to play. Really, I wish they had just given it to us straight. Maybe they didn’t want to scare us off. Maybe the unpredictability of the game is the scariest part.

“Wow, so this door was actually not original to the castle at all,” I said, muttering under my breath. Just more nonsense to give credibility to my obliviousness.

And then I saw it.

In the corner of my eye, something moved. It was impossibly fast. I could barely make it out, but I didn’t need to because my power was proximity-based. I just needed to be near it. I didn’t need to see it. I held the map up further, blocking my view from anything that might try to get near, and walked in the opposite direction of the figure I had just seen.

The red wallpaper started to function. A gray poster materialized in my mind. That was strange. In the corn maze, I had been able to see Benny the Haunted Scarecrow as soon as he was near, but with this creature, I couldn’t.

My ability was still working otherwise though. Strangely, I could only see one trope start to appear.

Invulnerable Form: The villain cannot be affected by tropes or attacks in its current state.

So much for this plan.

At least it was a great proof of concept. The Oblivious Bystander ability was keeping the monster from attacking me, and my Trope Master ability was technically functioning, though not to great effect.

It just happened that the only trope I could see was really bad news. “Invulnerable form,” what could that mean? It could be something that had to be weakened or was it just something that had to be caught off guard? Did this trope keep me from seeing its identity?

The fact that this creature, whatever it was, had an invulnerable form told me that it was probably supernatural.

I tried to think about what it meant when it said invulnerable. Did that mean the creature was literally invulnerable, or was it rendered invulnerable by the plot?

This creature could simply be unkillable because it would not be cinematic if it died right now. You rarely see a werewolf killed unless it’s in its wolf form, for example. That would be anticlimactic. Perhaps whatever my follower was, it wasn’t actually indestructible, but rather was just not meant to be killed until later. I thought to myself as I walked.

I don’t mean to pretend to you that I was somehow fearless in this moment. The truth is, I was a mess. I caught myself forgetting to speak because I was so preoccupied fretting about what was to come. It ended up not mattering because whatever this thing following me was, it did not have footsteps. I heard no sound coming from behind me, only the occasional flash of a shadow in the corner of my eye.

Soon, I would have a problem because, as brilliant as my plan was, it didn’t take into consideration one important thing: the hallway I was on didn’t go on forever. I was almost to the end. Somehow, I would have to go the other direction to get away from this thing, but how could I pretend not to see it when I turned around?

Sure, the whole muttering fool walking through the castle completely unaware he’s being followed schtick works, but as soon as I turned and saw whatever figure was behind me, the performance would be less than convincing.

I had no choice. I had to try to find some way to turn around and get back to the stairs.

I had last seen the figure on my right, so I turned left at the last door on the hallway. I jiggled the handle and then said aloud, “Huh, it’s locked.”

I raised the map up as if scrutinizing something that had been written on it. I was giving the performance my all. I looked from the map to the door, back to the map.

“Oh well,” I said, “guess I’ll go back downstairs.”

I’ll gladly accept my Oscar for that one.

I raised the map up so that I couldn’t see what was in front of me and pretended to be absolutely enraptured by a description of a carving in the stone between two of the doors. I began walking back the way I had come.

I could see in the corner of my eye that the figure that followed me was still there. As curious as I was to see it, I willed myself not to look. The Oblivious Bystander trope was working; it wasn’t attacking me.

I continued on, but my pursuer got braver. I could see it coming up behind me on my right, so I ever so gently tilted to my left. If this was a scene in a movie, I don’t know if the audience would be laughing or chewing on their fingernails.

Whatever this thing was, it was agile, moving from side to side without making a single sound. I could feel the skin on my neck grow hot because the only thing I knew that moved that quickly and quietly was a vampire, and I really did not want it to be a vampire.

I trudged forward, and the creature got closer. I held the map so tight to my face that I was straining credulity. Maybe I’m just nearsighted in this story, a bumbling tourist who forgot his glasses.

The figure moved around in front of me again. I held the map up, blocking off my view. At some point in time, I had stopped muttering. I was too afraid. I feared that by talking, my voice cracking would give away how unoblivious I was.

I tried to ignore the monster in front of me and set a course that allowed me to get around it once more.

But then I slipped.

The flooring in the upper story hadn’t been maintained, and my foot got bad purchase as I went to take a step. I almost fell forward but managed to catch myself just in time. I kept the map in front of my face the entire time, looking out to whichever side I knew the monster wasn’t on.

It was up and to the right from where I was.

I could tell it was humanoid.

Oh crap, it’s going to be a vampire, I thought to myself.

I could tell that it was floating a few inches off the ground.

Damn it, vampires can float.

I walked forward, but it was very difficult to fight the urge to just grab a glance of whatever this creature was, just one quick glance, maybe then I could make a run for it. I adjusted the paper just a slight amount and looked up into the right.

Shit!

What I saw was a man looking right back at me. We had made eye contact. There was no pretending to be oblivious anymore.

I started to run toward the stairway, but the man was on to me in a flash. It was almost hilarious how quickly he got to me.

It’s funny, my status changed to Unconscious before I even felt it hit me.

As my vision grew dimmer and I lost control of my body and fell to the ground, there was one silver lining.

This man was not a vampire, because as I looked up at the figure looming over me, I could see right through him.

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