The Surety

There is an account kept open for you, a deed laid ready on the green cloth, and your name already entered in the great ledger against tonight’s first line. The Surety opens in the cold at the street-door of a tall private guaranty house in a dead City lane on the last night, when the books are made up and the account is given over and the bond is taken as good, a warm glow far up the stair where the partners wait by the fire, where every soul who could not bear to be the one no one would ever rely on, the hand no one would lay a thing of value in, the name they would not put on the account, is trusted at last, brought up into the warm parlour, and given charge of everything. You came back through that door because something in here, finally, will take your bare word for good. All you have to do is sign the book, take the account, and let the house take the weight of being doubted off your own going-out.

The Surety is Book Seventeen 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 mahogany and brass and sealing-wax 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, and The Séance, 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. Sign the book and take the account, or keep to the cold counter, a caller passing through and not a client. Let one bond of yours be taken as good, or keep your bond your own. Your choices decide which of the book’s endings the house gives you, and the way out, the true one, asks whether you can cancel every bond, walk out into the cold lane relied on by no one, and give one good word to nobody, an ending that is wholly your own, the genuine untrusted one, and alive.

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. 123 numbered sections, 31 endings. The interactive audiobook follows.