The Cursed Manor Choose Your Own Adventure
By Elijah Cherland-Narum
Based on a concept developed by Patrick Harrison
Read and when you get to a stopping point, choose the number of the option you wish to follow and continue your story from there.
You are walking home.
A thick mist has settled on the path in front of you so that you can’t see more than two feet in any direction. The only light comes from the eerie glow of the crescent moon hanging ominously above you. In the distance you see the faint iridescent blue glow of a light. As you come closer you realize it is coming from a street lamp. Two children stand beneath the lamp holding hands. One of them grasps the hand of a stuffed bear which hangs limply by his side. As you draw nearer the taller child spots you.
“Please, you must help us,” she says.
“There is a monster in our house,” says the smaller one.
“What monster?” You ask in a would-be calm voice.
“We don’t know, our parents told us to wait outside,” says the older one. You look up and your eyes follow a long winding path leading to an old weather beaten mansion.
“I am Rose and this is Thorn,” says the girl introducing herself.
“Can you please go up to the house and make sure everything is alright,” asks Thorn.
If you choose to follow the path to the mansion…
If you choose to walk away…
1) You begin to walk up the stone path. Some of the mist has settled on the steps making them slick with moisture. As you reach the precipice of the path you stand on the foyer and look back towards the street lamp. It seems so far away. Could you really have climbed this high? Why had you never noticed this lonely house before? What is going on? You push those thoughts out of your head and focus on the task at hand. Without allowing yourself time to contemplate your next move you push open the massive oak door. The room before you is dark except for a small sliver of light from the moon casting strange distorted shadows.
You step inside. No sooner than you do a gust of wind slams the door behind you shut with a loud creak.
You pound against the door and yank at the handle but it is hard as stone. The door is locked from the outside. You are trapped. You turn and find yourself at a crossroads. To your left you see a huge spiral staircase ascending to a different floor. To your right you see a room with a long table laid with fine silverware and plates. Directly in front of you lies an unmarked door.
If you choose to ascend the spiral staircase…
If you chose to enter the dining room…
If you choose to open the door in front of you…
If you chose to attempt to escape…
2) Without meeting Rose and Thorns Eyes you walk away. They call out but you walk faster. You walk for miles and miles no longer following the path. The mist slowly consumes you. You no longer think. You no longer feel. You are the mist. You are gone.
THE END
3) You begin to walk up the spiral staircase. It is steep and slick with moisture but you manage to make it to the top. As you cross the final step you look up. You are in a library. Tomes with strange titles fill the shelves. You examine a couple but they all seem to be filled with gibberish. You turn to walk away but something catches your eye. You turn and find a thick book with your name written on the spine. Out of sheer curiosity you pull it off the shelf and begin to read. It is a detailed script of your entire life. Some of it is only things you could know. You become absorbed in the book. It is magical to read about your life. It is as if nothing else exists in the entire world. Suddenly you are near the end of the book. Only a few pages remain.
You enter the house…
You are climbing up the stairs…
You are reading a book that you took from the shelf and are quite oblivious to the monster in the shadows right behind you. You slowly turn around and squint into the shadows consuming the wall. You see nothing.
If you choose to go down the stairs…
If you choose to examine the shadows…
If you continue to look around…
4) You walk to your right and into a fine dining room Laden for a feast. A thick film of dust coats all of the dishes and furniture. As you examine the dishes you notice a pattern going around the edges of each dish. Without really understanding it you sense a dark and sinister magic.
Always in the back of your vision…
Wherever you look…
Consuming everything…
Somehow you sense it is connected to the very fiber of the house. In the dishes. The walls. Even the dust. To your right is a hearth with thick brass bars. It seems like you could fit if you tried to climb through and escape.
If you choose to further examine the dishes…
If you choose to climb into the chimney in hopes of escape…
If you choose to leave the room…
5) You walk forwards and attempt to open the door. It is locked. You attempt to prize it open and surprisingly, the handle turns. You push open the door and receive quite the shock. In front of you stands three life-like statues of humans in mid stride. The one closest to you holds a letter written on frayed ancient parchment. You gingerly take the letter and open it. This is what you read…
Run.
Get out as fast as you can.
The house is shifting.
Don’t follow the laughter.
Avoid the shadows.
There are only three of us left now.
I fear the end is near.
Could the statues have once been alive? You ask yourself. Would this be your fate? You read the letter through several more times before pocketing it.
If you choose to further examine the statues…
7) If you choose to leave the room…
6) You bang on the door. Over and over again until your hands are bruised and peeling paint covers the door mat. You throw furniture at the windows but nothing you do has any impact. It is as if you are attacking a brick wall. Eventually you succumb to the hopelessness of the dire situation and sink to the floor with your face in your hands. No sooner than you do a cold high pitched laugh begins to emanate from above you. You look up at the spiral staircase. It appears to be coming from a higher floor. You stand up and steel your nerves.
If you follow the sound…
If you ignore it and go into the dining room…
If you ignore it and go to the door in front of you…
7) You go back down to the entry room but something is very different. The rooms appear to be arranged differently. The door that you entered the house from is now on the opposite side of the wall and the dining room is lowered about a foot from the main room. A crystal chandelier hangs from the ceiling. Everything is changing. It is as if the house is a maze.
If you enter the dining room…
If you enter the door in front of you…
If you go up stairs…
8) You walk over to the shadows. As you approach them they do not thin away as you expected. You reach out your hand and as soon as it touches the darkness it is consumed. The shadows are creeping up your hand. You stagger back frantically and fall to the floor. They continue to creep up your arm like tongues of flame. Seeping into your very essence. The pain is unbearable. You stumble around blindly flailing your arms and trying to escape the terrible magic. Nothing you do can stop the ongoing darkening. Slowly you are consumed by the darkness. And everything goes black.
THE END
9) You stand up and set the book down on the table. Across from you on the other side of the room you see a sleek black grand piano and a large mirror. You walk over to the piano. The dust on the keys is so thick they look almost black. You turn to the mirror. Your pale terrified face stairs back at you. Out of the corner of your eye you see the reflection of a figure cloaked in darkness streak past you. You spin around but see nothing. Suddenly a faint high pitched laughter begins somewhere above you.
If you follow the laughter up the stairs to the next level…
10) You brush off a layer of dust from the plate nearest to you. As soon as you do you hear a voice behind you.
“What are you doing? Those are my dishes,” Says a woman who has a glassy look over her eyes and instead of looking directly at you is looking a little bit to your right.
“You have no business in my house, begone scourge,” she shouts and runs at you with a frying pan in her hand. Just as she is about to bring the frying pan down onto your head she bursts into a cloud of mist.
If you choose to ascend the staircase onto the floor above you…
If you choose to open the unmarked door across from you…
11) You shove yourself into the hearth and begin to climb. The chimney is taller than you expected but you still think you can make it to the top. You inch your way up feeling like a poltergeist Santa Claus when suddenly you feel heat below you. As you look down you see ghostly white flames licking their way up the sides of the chimney. With a yelp you let go of the sides of the chimney and slowly slide down clawing at the bricks as the heat intensifies. Slowly, painfully, you are consumed by the fire.
THE END
12) You walk out of the room still shivering in fear. When you get back into the entryway you look up. Everything is different. The house has shifted. It is as if you are in a maze with no way out. Everything is constantly changing.
If you choose to go up the spiral staircase…
If you choose to enter the unmarked door…
13) You take a closer look at the statues. Even now you are astounded by the detail. You reach out your hand to touch one and a terrified voice fills your head.
“Hello?”
“Is someone there?”
“Yes I am here, what’s going on?” You shout at the statue.
“You need to get out, get out as fast as you can, I think the only escape is the roof,”
“The roof, what’s on the roof?” You yell to the still unmoving statue.
“Terrible things, but you must try,” says the statue in its psychic voice.
“What things?” You yell at the statue but its voice has already faded from your head.
If you choose to ascend the spiral staircase to the next floor…
15) The bone chilling laughter seems to be coming from a higher floor of the house, so you begin to climb the steep staircase, rung by rung. When you reach the second floor you find that you are in a study. Hundreds of thick books with frayed spines line the walls. You almost stop to look around but the laughter still seems to be coming from above you. You continue to climb the staircase and when you reach the third floor the laughter stops.
16) The laughter stops as you walk towards the dining room
(Go to entry 4)
17) The laughter stops as your hand closes around the handle of the door
(Go to entry 5)
16) You are on a small landing. Three open doors sit around you, each the entrance to a bedroom. You walk into the closest one and see the life-like stone statues of two children, who stand looking out through the window. Rose, and Thorn. Suddenly you hear a creek behind you and see a peculiar sight. Rose and Thorn are climbing the final rungs of the staircase.
“I see you found us,” says Rose.
“We’re sorry for asking you to go into the house,” Says Thorn.
“It’s always making us do that,” Says Rose.
You reach out your hand in disbelief and it passes through them. They are apparitions.
“How long have you been here?” You ask.
“Time does not pass in the same way here,” they tell you.
“We can’t exactly remember but we think we were lured here a couple years ago. Our parents found the house one night when we were walking home and we decided to go in. They were attacked by a monster and told us to run. We ran in here but the door locked us in. We starved, but when our body’s died we stayed. The maze engine forced us to stay.”
“What is the maze engine?” You ask.
“It is what controls the house. It is slowly bringing all of the planes of existence together. That is why the monsters attacked our parents. That is why the house is shifting. If you touch the engine you will be able to escape.”
27) If you choose to go up the staircase to the final floor…
27) 26) 22) 21) 20) You are walking up the staircase and onto the roof. A chilly breeze blows your hair around continuously whipping your face. Above you a full moon casts a soft pale glow making long shadows. As your foot touches the final rung of the staircase you see the scene laid out before you. Almost twenty statues stand huddled around a plinth in the center of the deck. As you come closer you see what they are grouped around. A glass orb, suspended in thin air over a plinth. Inside it hangs thousands of stars. Which are orbited by hundreds of thousands of planets. It is entrancing. You walk over to one of the statues and reach out your hand. As soon as your flesh makes contact with the cold stone a voice fills your head.
The orb is called a maze engine.
It came from another place.
It is slowly bringing all of the planes of existence together.
That is why the house is shifting.
That is why we are forever trapped here.
If you can touch it you will be transported back to the mist that brought you here.
That mist is more powerful than you can imagine.
Now go.
And finish what we started.
You walk closer to the maze engine. You are getting close now. You reach out your hand to touch it but it feels heavy and petrified. You look down at it. It is hard as stone. Your fingers are inches away from the plinth when you see something move out of the corner of your eye. One of the statues is closer to you. You blink, and in the fraction of a second that your eyes are closed, three more statues are standing right next to you. One is so close in fact that you swear you can hear a heart beating an irregular pattern somewhere in its stone body. You continue to back away but they are closing in from all sides. Suddenly and without warning, a cold stone arm is pressed against your neck. It is slowly closing your windpipe. This is how you will die. Like all of the others. So close to the light at the end of the tunnel. Then suddenly you hear voices. Could this be the end? No, those are children's voices. Rose and thorn. The vice grip on your neck slackens slightly and you are able to slip out of the statue’s grasp. Rose and Thorn are holding all of the statues at bay with what appears to be a wall of iridescent pale blue energy that shimmers like droplets of water on a lake.
“We can’t hold it much longer,” shouts Rose.
“Go, touch the engine,” says Thorn.
“What about you?” You shout urgently.
“What very well may be the end of one life will be the beginning of another.” They shout in unison. You reach out your stone hand, the wind whipping your hair and touch the maze engine.
“Goodbye!” You shout as light consumes you.
Epilogue
You are walking home.
A thick mist has settled on the path in front of you so that you can’t see more than two feet in any direction. You must have dosed off as you were walking because you seem to be on a familiar path again. When you arrive at your house you open the door and walk in. You are home at last.
THE END
Hello. My name is Elijah Cherland-Narum. I am a 9th grader at St. Peter High School. Creative Writing has been one of my favorite subjects this quarter because I have improved dramatically from the beginning of the year, and I have received a lot of constructive feedback about my writing. I would recommend Creative Writing as an elective class to anyone who is interested in taking it because you have a lot of control over your writing and it is so much fun to share your work with others.