I should be playing the 65th Fighting Fantasy gamebook, Blood of the Zombies, for this blog, but I'm finding it hard to summon up the motivation for such a dreary slog. In the mean time, here's something seasonally appropriate...
A while back I mentioned that I didn’t own any of the Plot Your Own Horror Story books back in the 1980s. However, my sister did get a couple of them, both of which I borrowed and read, and playing through Nightmare Store for the blog got me sufficiently nostalgic that I now have copies of both of them as well.
The first one she acquired (IIRC from the shop near the end
of the High Street where I found Demons of the Deep) was Horror House. Well,
that was what it was called in Britain. The US release had the title Craven
House Horrors, which may be a reference to some aspect of American culture that
never really caught on over here. Or perhaps the UK publishers just thought
that, the name ‘Craven’ being strongly associated with news bulletins targeted at children, including it in the title might adversely affect sales.
What with author Hilary Milton’s name sharing so many
letters with that of a certain former candidate for the US Presidency, I can’t
help but think of the potential for a satirical parody of the book, changing
the title to White House Horrors and, depending on the parodist’s political
leanings, representing Hilary as either the source or the primary victim of the
eponymous horrors.
The first time I played the book, I wound up getting my
character killed in the fastest way possible. This involved encountering a
robot that fired a beam which caused my heart to beat with increasing rapidity
until it could no longer take the strain. Not a mistake I will be repeating
today. I also remember how to avoid the ending that most perturbed me, so I
shan’t be getting myself paralysed and very slowly eaten alive by a bird (possibly
a raven, though I don’t think the book ever specifies the type), either.
Anyway, that’s enough reminiscence. Time to play the book
again and see if I can also avoid the unpleasant fates about which I don’t
remember so much…
Following a visit to my cousins, who live a few miles from
my home, I am summoned by my mother, as a severe storm is on the way. I set
off, not certain that I’ll be able to cycle back before the storm hits, and contemplate
taking a short cut along Willow Lane. It’ll cut more than a mile off the
journey, but the road is barricaded at both ends, purportedly because it’s the
private property of the man who owns Craven House.
Craven House is a dilapidated plantation house which
pre-dates the First American Civil War. It’s generally accepted that the Craven
family’s fortunes took a turn for the worse during that war, though local
legends disagree about who died and how. It is also rumoured that the
great-grandson of the original owners now leads a hermit-like existence in the
house. He’s believed to be a scientist or an engineer or a doctor, and also a
genius or insane or both. Regardless, the locals shun the house, and my cousins
and I suspect that the barricades are there to keep the old man in rather than
everyone else out.
Just as I’m passing the first set of barricades, the rising
wind brings down a tree, blocking the legitimate route home. It doesn’t occur
to me to turn back, return to my cousins’ home, and get my aunt to telephone my
mother to explain that I’m going to have to stay there until the storm has
passed. Maybe creepy old houses emit an aura that suppresses people’s ability
to make rational decisions – that would help explain a lot of horror films…
So, erroneously concluding that I ‘have to’ take Willow
Lane, I circumvent the barricades, and resume my journey. The road, being
disused, is in a poor state of repair, and between that and the worsening weather,
I end up in a ditch with a badly buckled front wheel. The accident takes place
more or less in front of Craven House, and as the rain starts to fall and
lightning flickers across the sky, I opt to shelter on the porch.
Much of the porch is in a state of ill-repair, the
floorboards closest to the front door appearing least likely to give way
beneath my weight. I move onto them, and of course the door opens. I step
inside because the Idiot Protagonist Field is much stronger here, and see that the
house’s furniture is much as it must have been back when whatever misfortune
beset the Cravens took place. The sound of some kind of machine operating elsewhere in the house fills the air, but isn't so loud as to keep me from hearing the door close and latch itself behind me.
Seeking the source of the mechanical noise would get me killed as in my first attempt at the book, so my choices are limited to attempting to leave at once and waiting here until the storm is over. I might as well get confirmation that departing is not going to be as straightforward as entering was. Yep, there is no handle on this side of the door, so I'm not able to reopen it.
As I mentioned in my previous Plot Your Own playthrough, one of the more contentious aspects of this series is that sometimes the options at the end of a page involve determining what happens rather than what the reader's character does. Here I have what appears to be a hybrid choice, unless 'Is there' is supposed to mean 'Check to see if there is'. Still, rather than risk warping reality to create a convenient open window, I'll try searching for something I can use to raise the latch from this side.
Fumbling around on the mantelpiece, I find what I think is a nail, but my attempts to pick it up lead to the discovery that it's actually a switch that activates a classic 'creepy old house' fixture: the secret door disguised as a bookcase. The decision presented here is a new variant: what am I expecting to find behind the secret door? In other words, I could be mistaken in my belief...
A hidden passage is more likely to be of use to me than a concealed treasure hoard (and have fewer potentially lethal security measures), so I hope that's what I've found. And I'm right about what it is, but wish I wasn't. As I step through the secret door, I inadvertently trigger a lever that closes the door behind me, and am unable to reopen it from this side. Steps lead up to a large room, empty apart from the picture covering the whole of one wall. This depicts a battlefield at evening, strewn with the dead and dying.
Before I can turn away, the picture somehow becomes more real, the reek of gunsmoke and worse filling my nostrils. Stumbling over a corpse, I cry out, attracting the attention of a wounded soldier, who charges towards me. There isn't time for me to flee before he raises his rifle and pulls the trigger. He's out of ammunition, or there's something wrong with the firing mechanism, but that doesn't help me for long, because the rifle is also fitted with a bayonet, which the soldier plunges into my stomach.
While not quite up there with 'pecked to death while unable to move', that was one of the top three nasty bad endings I remembered from reading my sister's copy of the book. (The other one, in case you were wondering, involved becoming the subject of a surgical procedure that starts with the extraction of the brain. Possibly without anaesthetic.) I'd hoped to survive the adventure, but, as the news so often shows, things don't always end happily.
