Choose Your Own Adventure Story: The Haunted House — Part III
Option D — Follow the howls to the attic
(This is a choose-your-own adventure story, so if you didn’t just arrive from reading Part II, you might want to head back to this post.)
I decide to follow the howling noises. Please don’t be werewolves, please don’t be werewolves…
Eliza squints at me as we climb the creaking staircase. “What are you thinking, Carlos?”
“I’m thinking about the howling. And how it’s the curse!”
Eliza shakes her head. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for this.”
“Yeah, like the house is cursed.”
“Arrrroooooooooooo!” Frank howls, and the wolves start howling back.
I put my hand over his mouth, but he licks my palm. Gross. “Quit it, Frank!”
“I’m no quitter!” he says.
At the top of the steps, the wolf sounds are much louder. In this narrow hallway, there are only three doors. And one of them is rattling on its hinges. Snarling, growling sounds bleed out from behind it.
Frank peeks through the keyhole, but then immediately jumps back. “Hot air in my eyeball!” he yelps.
“There’s no such thing as werewolves,” Eliza whispers, but even she sounds afraid.
Aaaarrrrrrroooooooooo!
“There’s only one way to find out.” I push the door open.
Three wolves leap at me and tackle me to the ground. I close my eyes. “Ahhhhhh! Please don’t eat me!”
All of a sudden, I’m being licked head-to-toe with three slobbery tongues.
“Ew, gross!” Frank says, delighted. He loves gross things.
“Get off my dogs!” a woman cries from the corner of the room. She has flyaway gray hair and she is so old that even her wrinkles have wrinkles. She straightens her pink nightgown and glares at us.
“Who are you?” Eliza says.
“This is my house! Who are you?”
Uh oh. We’re three trespassers. “Er…”
“We’re human people,” Frank says, and Eliza smacks her hand on her forehead. “Are you sure this isn’t a werewolf?”
“No, just stray dogs that stay with me.”
“And the three kids from the legend? The ones who disappeared on the full moon and were never seen again?”
She blinks at me.
For an uncomfortably long time. “You know, kid, sometimes a story is just a story.”
“HEY! Mom’s wallet!” Frank says, pointing at the mouth of the biggest dog. It’s carrying the wallet in its jaws. “Open up!” Frank starts tug-of-warring with the dog, which growls every time Frank goes to take away his new toy. Finally Frank tears the wallet away, and he examines it carefully.
“Think Mom will notice the bite marks?”
“Just tell her you bit it,” Eliza says. “She’d believe that anyway.”
Frank pops the wallet into his mouth. “Tastes like… dead cow and dog slobber,” he says with the leather between his teeth.
“Thank you very much, and sorry for barging into your house,” Eliza says to the woman. “We should be going now.”
Frank skips out the attic door, Eliza follows, and I’m the caboose. Just before I close the door, the woman whispers to her dog, “That was a close call, Billy. They were onto us.” She begins to cackle. “If they didn’t leave… they’d be next!”
“She’s joking, right?” I whisper. “Right?”
She hoots and howls along with the dogs — or wolves. And I run, run, run — and don’t stop until I’m outside again.
In the sunlight, in the yard of The House, I let out a shaky laugh. My heart is racing like I’ve run a marathon. I’ve never cracked a case before, and even though I was scared out of my mind half the time, it was kind of fun.
“I… I think that was actually pretty awesome.”
“Yay! Let’s do it again!” Frank shouts. He winds up to pitch the wallet back into the house, but Eliza snatches it out of his hands.
“HEY!” he says, but then he instantly gets distracted by a butterfly and ends up chasing it down the sidewalk. Eliza and I lag behind to talk.
“I’m glad we know what the howling is now… but you think she’d keep her dogs quiet. They disturb the whole town with their yowling!”
“Well,” I say, “maybe she likes to encourage the mystery.”
“Maybe she was just waiting for someone to care enough to find the answer. Detective work is in your genes, Carlos.”
My mom is the co-owner of a detective agency called Las Pistas, and she’s always working hard on cases. I just never thought that I could do what she does.
“Maybe we can solve something else soon,” Eliza suggests. “Maybe your mom would have ideas?”
I laugh. “Mom hasn’t ever let me help with her casework.”
Eliza smiles, and her gray eyes twinkle. “She hasn’t let you help with her casework yet.”
Yet. Until this moment, I never knew how much I loved that word. Until next time!
CASE CLOSED.
Want to try solving the mystery again? Click here to head back to the beginning.
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!
