The Haunt

You wake on a chaise the colour of old wine, in a parlour cold enough to show your breath, and you do not remember lying down. There is a card on the table, printed in a typeface that belongs on a theatre door, and it says you have been cast.

The Haunt is a house built out of one griever’s loss, a descent you take room by room, floor by floor, through someone’s worst day. A girl the house keeps burying who will not stay dead. A voice in the walls that finishes your thoughts a breath early. A thing in the mirrors that is getting better at being you. And, at the centre, a door you have stood at before and could not make yourself open.

You read by deciding. Pocket the salt or leave it. Trust the voice or count your own steps. The house remembers what you carry, and your choices decide which of the book’s endings it gives you. Most are bad. One is the truth. And the way out, the ending the Curator calls winning, costs you the very thing you came to keep.

▶ Play it free in your browser, then keep the ebook or paperback. 193 numbered sections, 44 endings, about an hour a path. Book One of ENCORE, a choose-your-path horror anthology. The interactive audiobook follows.