The Scourge

There is a black cap laid ready for you on its square of white cloth, a warrant of terror sealed against tonight’s making, and your name already entered in the roll of the dreaded in a hand you could swear is your own. The Scourge opens in the cold at the gatehouse of a great citadel-house in a dead precinct on the last night, when the terror is made and the black cap is set and the name is raised to the roll of the dreaded and the first fear is struck, a warm glow far up the stair where the custody waits by the candles, where every soul who could not bear to be the one no one would ever fear, the one whose anger moved no hand, the name no back ever went cold at, is made a scourge at last, brought up into the warm high hall, and dreaded over everything. You came back through that door because something in here, finally, will make a terror of your name. All you have to do is be set on the high seat, take the dread, and let the house take the weight of being un-feared off your own going-out.

The Scourge is Book Twenty-One of ENCORE, a choose-your-path horror. The same Curator keeps the house; the same company of the dead is recast into a new production, this one cold iron and sealing-wax and black felt and quietly glad of you. Bring the character you built in The Haunt, The Vigil, The Understudy, The Crossing, The Gallery, The Betrothed, The Confessor, The Mourners, The Assize, The Terminus, The Exchange, The Ward, The Line, The Light, The Colours, The Séance, The Surety, The Reliquary, The Godhead, and The Sovereign, and the house remembers what you carried, who you are, and what you have already proven you will and will not do.

You read by deciding. Take the cap and be made a terror, or keep to the cold rail of the outer bailey, one of the harmless passing through and not a scourge. Let one back go cold at your step and one fear be struck, or keep yourself mortal and feared by none. Your choices decide which of the book’s endings the house gives you, and the way out, the true one, asks whether you can let your name be struck from the roll of the dreaded, let your black cap be broken and burned, walk out into the cold bailey feared by no one, an ending that is wholly your own, the genuine un-feared one, mortal and your own.

If you like Fighting Fantasy or Choose Your Own Adventure, if you like interactive horror, if you like the cold anthology dread of American Horror Story, this is built for you.

▶ Play it free in your browser, then keep the ebook or paperback. 133 numbered sections, 39 endings. The interactive audiobook follows.