We're in Cities at Night and We Got Time on Our Hands

Back in the mid-1980s, when I would habitually look at random pages of gamebooks on store bookshelves, one series that frequently got me to sneak a peek but never grabbed me sufficiently that I chose to add any of it to my collection was Plot Your Own Horror Story. The variety of nasty endings appealed, but I was put off by the lack of stats and the fact that some of the decisions determined not what my character did but what happened next.

As far as I can tell, the series is not particularly well-regarded within gamebook fandom. The books skew towards the Schroedinger end of the spectrum, and the resultant lack of consistency can affect tone as well as plot. To be fair, I have also seen it argued that they should be considered a separate subgenre within interactive fiction, using the gamebook formula to create a crude simulacrum of cooperative storytelling rather than 'an adventure in which you are the hero'. The series title supports that reading, actually.

One quirk of the series is that each page mentions the number of the page from which you just came, which is something of a bonus for the sort of reader who likes to leave a finger marking the previous section in case they chose poorly, or for those who enjoy searching for gruesome death paragraphs and take an interest in the sequence of events leading up to them. This feature also makes it a good deal easier to confirm if you've made a mistake and turned to the wrong section, though it doesn't help much with trying to remember where you just were so you can figure out where you should have gone.

A while back, in the course of browsing for second-hand books, I found a copy of book 2 in the series, Hilary Milton's Nightmare Store, which jogged my memory. While some of the other titles in the series turned up all over the place, I only ever came across a brand-new copy of Store in a bookshop near the end of Tunbridge Wells High Street. And browsing through it for inventive demises had led me to an ending that created a more powerful sense of unease than I got from most of the horror stories I read when going through that phase of my teens.

I'm not going to describe it here, because those recollections led to my buying the book with a view to blogging about it here, and as I'm just about to embark on my first ever proper attempt at the book, I might end up reaching the ending in question. I hope to find a route through the book that doesn't end badly, but one other detail I remember clearly is that the choice that leads into that particular ending has no good outcomes, so if I do wind up at that particular 'doomed if you do, doomed if you don't' section, I'll pick the option that so troubled my younger self.

My character hails from a small town in Mississippi, but I'm currently visiting relatives in Atlanta. This goes well until the day when both my uncle and aunt have commitments in the evening. Rather than leave me (their) home alone, my uncle suggests that I spend the evening in Wallenberg's department store, and gives me a little money to buy something for myself and a gift for my little brother. The store seems to be bigger than all the shops in my home town combined, and after spending some time exploring it, I sit down on a recliner in the TV display area. Having worn myself out, I doze off, and nobody notices me at closing time (hey, it was the eighties).

Waking to find myself in a deserted store with minimal lighting, and checking my watch to find that it's a good three quarters of an hour after my uncle was due to collect me, I react in a commendably level-headed manner. First I head to the office, hoping to be able to phone my aunt from there, but it's empty and locked. The phones at the counters are all dead, which alarms me until I conclude that there must be a master switch that cuts them off when the building is (supposedly) empty of people. The front door is also locked, and when I attempt to push down on the locking bar, it causes an unpleasant buzzing noise. My worry that it could be part of some security set-up that'll give me an electric shock if I don't let go seems a little fanciful, but maybe there's a sub-clause to the right to bear arms concerning the right to fry intruders.

Remembering having seen a telephone booth on the second floor, I decide to look for that, which is when things start getting odd. The escalators have, understandably, been shut down for the night, but as I ascend one, it starts moving. In the opposite direction, of course. I increase my pace, since going the wrong way on an escalator isn't that tricky, and the escalator accelerates to match my new speed. Eventually I give up, and just let it carry me down. And when I get close to the bottom, it reverses direction and speeds up again.

Once I'm almost at the top, I take the chance of leaping up the remaining distance, doing so just before the escalator starts to descend again, so I make it to the second floor. Disconcerted by this experience, I get to make my first decision: try to find a fire exit and use that to get out, or just settle down somewhere comfy for the night.

Better to be proactive than passive, I think. Suspecting that the fire escape will be situated in the rear of the store, I head in that direction. This takes me through the women's clothing department, and I am startled to catch sight of a woman staring at me. My alarm fades as I realise that she's just a mannequin (though if I were a little more genre-savvy, I'd know better than to be reassured by that).

Continuing on my way, I bump into a mirror, and hear a noise I can't identify from the left. Moving right, I reach a point at which I can again head for the rear, and catch sight of a sign that I think indicates an emergency exit, though legibility is poor in these conditions. Opening the double doors beneath the sign, I find myself at the top of a flight of stairs. The doors slam shut, and cannot be opened from this side.

A faint light at the bottom of the stairs is all I have to guide me down. As I descend, I become aware that the steps are getting narrower, which strikes me as being poor design. And then I realise that they weren't built that way: one of the walls is moving, and if it continues to do so, I risk being crushed. I need to get off these stairs, and fast. I'm about a quarter of the way down, so turning round and heading back up should take less time than trying to get to the bottom - at least in a manner that won't break a limb or my neck.

Taking the stairs three at a time, I get to the door just as the moving wall makes contact with my shoulder, and the run-up gives me enough momentum to be able to burst through the doors. Phew! Nevertheless, there is something seriously amiss here. The misbehaving escalator was bad enough, but walls should definitely not move like that.

Now I get one of those controversial fourth wall-breaking moments, as I have to decide whether or not I make a new discovery. If I do, it's not likely to be anything good, but just continuing to seek an exit probably won't be significantly safer. Let's introduce an unexpected development!

And... I'm not back in the women's clothing department (yeah, I chose not to go with that gag). The doors have led me into an empty room, which smells of gas, and what meagre illumination it has is flickering. Also, the walls are shaking. Catching sight of another door, I pull down on the locking bar, and the door opens for just long enough to let me through.

I'm outside! Close to the parking lot. Which makes no sense, but we've not exactly been at home to Mr. Rationality since the escalator's shenanigans, so I'm not going to argue with a topographical absurdity that's enabled me to escape from the store. There's a telephone booth close by, so I call the relatives, and within an hour I'm back at their place.

In the morning there's a report on the radio concerning the collapse of a wall in Wallenberg's department store. That's pretty inconclusive. Preferable to a report about the discovery of my corpse under the collapsed wall, though.

So, I survived. As a venture into the mildly creepy and weird, that wasn't bad. Different decisions might have led to something more preposterous, or to a much nastier ending. Talking of which, I'm still not going to describe the ending that so perturbed teen-me, because I'm a little curious about the sharedness or otherwise of my experience. Is there anybody reading this who remembers playing Nightmare Store when they were younger? If so, was there any ending that particularly troubled you? And should the answer to that question also be yes, that leaves just one final question: what was that ending?