Choose Your Own Adventure Story: The Haunted House —The Beginning
Choose correctly, and you’ll solve the mystery. Choose poorly and it might be CASE CLOSED for you! Start reading, if you dare.
Eliza is looking at The House like it’s a puzzle to solve, Frank sees it as an adventure to be had, and I’m the only one who recognizes The House for what it truly is: a trap.
“Eliza, we are not going in there,” I say to my best friend. A shiver travels up my spine. The house is old and abandoned, with cracked windows and chipped bricks. It looks flimsy enough to crumble with a breeze.
But that’s nothing compared to the rumors about this place. A hundred years ago, three kids entered the cursed house on the full moon, and they were never seen again. Ever since, at midnight on the full moon, our whole town can hear loud howls echoing, coming right from the attic. Everyone knows the story, and we all avoid The House.
Or we did. Until Eliza’s little brother, Frank, threw his mom’s wallet through a shattered window. (Why did Frank even have his mom’s wallet to begin with? He stole it to buy ice cream from an ice cream truck he didn’t even hear. He’s seriously impossible.)
“Eliza, no. People go in and they don’t come out,” I say. “A wallet isn’t worth being cursed.”
“Carlos, let’s be logical about this,” says Eliza, who’s full name is practically Eliza Let’s-Be-Logical-About-This Thompson. “There’s no such thing as a curse. Besides, my mom will be really mad if we just leave the wallet Frank threw.”
Frank grins. “It’s fun to throw things!” Eliza’s six-year-old little brother is a teeny-tiny menace. He’s always touching objects he’s not supposed to, and going places he’s not supposed to, and eating stuff he’s not supposed to, like the time he ate five quarters and had to go to the hospital to get them out.
Sometimes he tags along with Eliza and me. Other times, he wreaks havoc by himself, and the wallet toss was definitely a solo-Frank job.
“Maybe we can call your mom to get it,” I suggest. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.”
Eliza frowns. “You’re not scared, are you?”
“Meow! Meow! Meow meowwwww!” Frank mews at me.
I think, in some weird Frank way, he’s trying to call me a chicken. “Uh… don’t you mean bawk bawk?” I ask.
“Why would a scaredy cat say bawk?” Frank says, genuinely confused. Then he goes back to meowing at me.
“Okay, fine! I’ll go.” If Eliza and Frank are by my side, I think it will be okay. (Maybe. I hope.)
We head toward the door. Frank practically sprints. Eliza marches. And I trudge… very reluctantly.
“Do you hear that?” I say, stopping dead in my tracks. “That music!”
“There is no music,” Eliza says.
“Oh yes there is!” Frank says, and he lets out one enormously loud fart.
Eliza rolls her eyes. “Great, a flatulent symphony.”
The door is a deep, dark brown. I can tell from here it’s thick, but rotting along the edges. This is — hands down — the closest I’ve ever been to The House, and I don’t like it ONE BIT.
“Trick or treat!” Frank says, knocking on the door.
“Stop that,” I say. “Here’s the plan. We run in, get the wallet, and run out. Easy, peasy.”
I put my hand on the doorknob, and —
It’s locked. Phew!
I pull Eliza by the arm. “Well, we tried.” I can’t even hide the relief in my voice. I am desperate to get away from the creepy music, which is even creepier now that I know I’m the only one who hears it. “Let’s go home — ”
“Wait!” Eliza says. “What’s that? Around the doorknob?”
We squint closer and see some letters scratched in around the knob.
“Maybe it’s some sort of secret message,” Eliza says. “If we figure it out, we can enter this house.”
“Secret message!” Frank shouts, aghast. “Secrets are no fun unless they’re shared with FRANK.”
“Maybe we have to unscramble the letters!” I say.
“I think the letters are in the right order, but we either have to read them clockwise or counterclockwise,” Eliza says softly. She’s doing that thing where she talks to herself to think out some conundrum. She always does it in math class, a subject where she excels… and I flop.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It definitely seems scrambled to me.”
“Carlos, trust me. It’s in the right order, wrong direction. We just have to find our starting letter, and then we read around.” Eliza taps on the doorframe. And on the fourth knock, the pane swivels out to reveal a small keyboard. “It’s some sort of smart house.”
“This is a smarthouse? This old thing?”
“It seems so. If we put the passcode in this keyboard, maybe the door will unlock for us. So what do you think — unscramble? Or circular reading?”
If you think the message says retreat, click here.
If you think the message says treater, click here.
About the Author:
Lauren Magaziner is the author of Wizardmatch, Pilfer Academy, and The Only Thing Worse Than Witches. She is originally from New Hope, Pennsylvania, and she currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she writes full-time. Lauren is also a secret, undercover international detective — but don’t blow her cover. You can visit Lauren at http://laurenmagaziner.com/.
About Case Closed #1: Mystery in the Mansion:
Choose-your-own-adventure and puzzle-packed mystery collide in the first book in Lauren Magaziner’s new hilarious and high-stakes middle grade series in which the reader must help Carlos and his friends put together the clues to save his mom’s detective agency. In this wildly entertaining and interactive adventure, YOU pick which suspects to interview, which questions to ask, and which clues to follow. You pick the path — you crack the case!
